Can Increasing Pipe Diameter Enhance Home Water Cooling Systems?

[Mechatronics]

Hello,

First of all, i would like to introduce myself to Physics Forums. I am a Mechatronics Engineering Graduate. Me and my friend have a small project for the house, since we live in a hot area, we decided to design something to cool water at home. We came up with an idea which says that we have a whole refrigeration system, we will just modify the evaporator but we are not sure of what we are doing since we lack experience.

The idea is that we have a 1 inch pipe coming out of the pump, we decided to increase the diameter to 2 inch to reduce the velocity of the fluid(water) and give more time for the fluid to get cooled. The evaporator copper tubes will be covering the 2 inch copper pipe. We can calculate the heat transfer through the surfaces. My question is, what type of insulation we need to cover the evaporator to avoid exposing it to the sun lights and another question in mind as well, if the flow stopped in the pipe by switching off the pump pr any reason, is there any chance of blockage to occur since the compressor will keep on working whille the flow is zero. Is there any idea to avoid the blockage. we thought of adding flow sensor after the evaporator and connect it to a controller but i am askin if we could find easier solution.

Regards! :)

 

[Danger]

Welcome to PF, Mechatronics.
Russ is probably the best guy to address this question, since he's an HVAC engineer. My first thought toward the insulation problem would be a fibreglass wrap with aluminum foil as the outer layer. Haven't a clue about the rest of your problem.
One thing, though. I appreciate individualism, but using non-standard colours or fonts is rather irritating. Please use black text for future posts.

 

[Mechatronics]

Thanks, Danger!

I will be waiting for Russ for clarification then, and sorry about the text color. :)

 

[Danger]

No worries.
We do occasionally use a different colour or size sparingly for emphasis or to post a quote from another source. Personally, I use italics for emphasis.

 

[FredGarvin]

For insulation, I would look at pipe wraps you can find at Home Depot and the like, especially the kind meant for cold water pipes to prevent dripping due to cold pipes running in warm areas, i.e. condensation wrap. If these are outside, then you could put a final covering of PVC wrap to make it weather resistant.

 

[russ_watters]

Well, the question doesn't ask anything about thermodynamics, just controls, but I do know a little about that...

I'd probably put a temperature controller in there with a sensor on the pipe to prevent freezing. You'll want this anyway since if you aren't dissipating enough heat with your system, it can freeze even if the pump is on. Something like this, for example: http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/5TB81