Radiical Water Chiller Project

Radiical Water Chiller Project

A large part of this project has already been posted on OCAU in the forum posting. To follow up on this project from its beginnings it will be necessary to look here. During this phase of construction the project centered around a Vapochill XE compressor and condenser. The stability of a 12 volt PSU when coupled with the Danfoss compressor have led to a change in direction for the project. At this point there is the need to re look at the project using a 1/12hp compressor driven by 240 volt mains power. The perceived need to use R404a refrigerant has also narrowed the field to a couple of readily available units. We have now decided to use a 1/12hp Kirby compressor in this project.

Figure One

Having decided upon a compressor for the project the next step was to arrange for a suitable condenser with a cooling capacity great enough to cope with the projected heat loads. We were able to secure the condenser from an OCAU member.

Figure Two

Having obtained the condenser the issue we needed to solve for our application was the fan attachment points. Although a metal surround had been supplied with the condenser there was simply no way a standard 120 mm fan would fit the 134 mm wide fan space provided .

Figure Three

To mount the fan on the condenser face there would need to be some sort of mounting plate made up.

The front face is shown here if Figure Four.

In figure four the fan attachment points for screw holes are shown here in the line markings setting out the hole alignments.

Rather than build a restrictive mounting plate we elected to mount the fan onto a radiator shroud. We felt that this would aid in air flow through the condenser unit in much the same way that radiators are improved by fan shrouds when water cooling. No conventional shroud would fit due to the screw hole placement so we turned to our BIX shroud to speed up the fitting out process.

Figure Five

The fan shroud was an almost perfect fit for the fan to condenser mounting and after a little bit of milling to provide adjustment slots on the condensers original mounting plate we were again on our away.

Figure Six

Figure Seven

Looking at the picture above in Figures Six and Seven the issue that faced us now was that there were still spaces left on the top and bottom of the condenser where air could be dragged through the fan without passing through the condenser body. To solve this issue we "roughed up" an enclosure to seal off any air entry points top and bottom.

The completed enclosure sat so well on the condenser it looked as though it had always belonged there . Satisfied with the progress on the condenser fan shroud at that stage we turned our attention to re routing the tubing so that we could pull air from the case enclosure out to the fresh air. This involved placing a formed bend in the copper tubing to radius 180 degrees.

Next.................................... Bending and twisting the tubing