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Narrowboat Aircon Using Canal/River Water?


jono2.0

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2 hours ago, Murflynn said:

if the gent involved called himself "NMEA member" or such-like, then that would be fine.

but his username and avatar imply that he IS the NMEA (i.e. everything he says is the official and considered view of the NMEA) which he definitely isn't.

if you think about the possible ramifications of this apparent deception you may decide to revise your opinion.

 

as I said earlier, if my username was I.C.E. and I used the Institution's heraldic crest as my avatar, then if I expressed an opinion on a civil engineering matter (of which I have 50 years' experience) then it could reasonably be mistaken for the Institution's considered opinion.   I would never be so arrogant as to imply any such thing.  I would be very surprised if the Association involved has authorised his use of their name and avatar in this way, and consequently it would appear (to me at least) that he is acting unprofessionally.  

This is not a new issue, I raised it several months ago.

I think you are out of order. Only a complete numpty would imagine that a member of this forum was, or represented, an American organisation. So there is no apparent deception and you are making a fuss about nothing. If he used the NMEA logo in a professional capacity when it was not sanctioned, that would certainly be bad, but this is just an amateur forum where some members post advice to freely help others. Don't piss on it.

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4 hours ago, mross said:

 

Solar panels on the roof will help to keep the roof cool.  Solar thermal panels could help and provide hot water.  You could always dump the hot water when you cylinder was hot.  I think the cooling water inlet would need to be in or close to the base plate.

 

I have the solar photovoltaics and solar hot water on the boat roof. It's still too hot! Only have to put up with it for a few days a year, but mooring in the shade works well and is free too. :)

Jen

Edited by Jen-in-Wellies
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3 hours ago, Loddon said:

 

Tell me Muffin what have you contributed technically to this forum that could be of use to fellow members?

 

perhaps you'd like to go back to 2006 onwards and find out.  Different username, but the content is all there, basically a forum based build blog - thousands of posts.

nuff said.

  

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4 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

perhaps you'd like to go back to 2006 onwards and find out.  Different username, but the content is all there, basically a forum based build blog - thousands of posts.

nuff said.

  

Impressive only a member since 2014 but claims posts going back to 2006, do you have a time machine?

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7 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

perhaps you should read my post more carefully before spouting rubbish. 

I did but unless you disclose the old user name you could be spouting bollix

Edited by Loddon
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Getting back to the original question 'Could canal water be used in a radiator for air conditioning in a canal boat', i think the answer is yes probably it could.

In a conventional air conditioning unit a motor driven compressor pumps gas under pressure until it turns into liquid (the heat generated is dispersed via a coiling coil & fan). The high pressure liquid is allowed to evaporate into a gas which creates a cooling effect into a radiator matrix, a fan blows air through this thus giving a cooling (air conditioning effect).

I cannot see any reason why instead of cooling gas, canal water should not be pumped at low pressure through a similar cooling coil with a blower fan to give a simple form of air conditioning, because the temperature difference between canal water (say12 degrees) & the cabin air (say 30 degrees) is 18 degrees then some amount of cooling will take place.

  A degree of electrical power will be required but a 'bilge pump' plus a small axial fan should not be too bad. ( it is the compressor on standard A/C system which is the power hungry beast.)

I suggest that an old '12 volt evaporator unit' from a supermarket type chilled delivery van would be a good place to start. The unit will come complete with a 12 volt radial fan, connect this up to your bilge pump from the canal & away you go.

Don't forget as someone said there may well be condensation to collect & remove (the condenser units come with a built in condensate drip tray) 

Anyone keen to give this a try???

Tony

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I bought a standalone unit some years back to cool an office. It came from B&Q. It works in much the same way, with a water reservoir that is pumped with a tiny pump through a tiny matrix and a fan blowing through the matrix. You can add ice cubes to the water container. It's singularly useless because the water quickly gets up to room temperature even if you do use ice cubes. It would probably work much better with canal water that's going to be consistently 15+ degrees cooler. 

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In terms of the physics, isn't the easiest (and cheapest) way to get the interior of the boat a bit cooler just to moor in the shade?

Personally I'd be outside soaking up the sun - we get little enough of it.  

6 hours ago, WotEver said:

It's singularly useless because the water quickly gets up to room temperature even if you do use ice cubes

Latent heat of fusion! But you could easily calculate how much ice you would need.

I reckon the answer would be --  a lot

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1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

Latent heat of fusion! But you could easily calculate how much ice you would need.

I reckon the answer would be --  a lot

Over in the USA, where they haven't yet grown up to use proper SI units, they measure the capacity of aircon units in tons. A typical unit is a few tons. A ton of cooling the amount of cooling you get from melting one ton of ice in 24 hours.

 

MP.

Edited by MoominPapa
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5 minutes ago, MoominPapa said:

Over in the USA, where they haven't yet grown up to use proper SI units, they measure the capacity of aircon units in tons. A typical unit is a few tons. A ton of cooling the amount of cooling you get from melting one ton of ice in 24 hours.

 

MP.

IIRC 1 ton of refrigeration capacity is about 3.5kW.

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13 minutes ago, MoominPapa said:

one ton of ice in 24 hours

 

6 minutes ago, cuthound said:

about 3.5kW

So WotEver would have had to load up a lot of ice. He'd be better off just sitting in the shade.

3.5kW is a lot of battery power too.

Edited by Machpoint005
forgot to add the ha'penny
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1 minute ago, Machpoint005 said:

So WotEver would have had to load up a lot of ice

He would. About a ton by the looks of things. I wonder how much power it would take to freeze a ton of ice...

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2 minutes ago, mross said:

3.5kW of air con only requires 875W of electricity.  My boat has AC but you have to run the engine as the compressor is belt driven.  I have never used it!

Where does the other 2.625kW come from?

5 minutes ago, WotEver said:

He would. About a ton by the looks of things. I wonder how much power it would take to freeze a ton of ice...

3.5kW plus a bit to cool the water down first, all divided by the efficiency, a figure I'm not even going to guess (but it's nowhere near 100%!).

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13 minutes ago, cuthound said:

I'm sure Bizzard  can work something out whilst eating ice lollies :P

Peltier chips work on the temperature differential between the two sides, right?  So you stick a steak on a peltier chip which is sitting on the evaporator plate. The difference in temperature of the steak and the plate generates the power to drive the compressor which cools the evaporator plate a bit more. This keeps the temperature differential and hence keeps the power to the compressor. Simple. 

Edited by WotEver
Autowrong
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The temperature of canal water is being underestimated here. I have a thermometer attached to the baseplate in a void under the cratch deck. Last Friday, before the weather became hot, the canal water temperature was 16.5 degrees. On Tuesday, a horrible hot humid day here, it was 24 degrees. Right now it's 22.1.   

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