Natwerk Designs

what is a good example of a intelligently designed modern cooling system?

I am hoping to incorporate a cooling system in my sci- fi story. OH I mean how do they work?

Public Comments

1. Mitsubishi VRF / Daikin VRV systems. Inverter driven. Heat recovery. They have it all.
2. The 'driver' of the system is an ultra-sonic generator that compresses helium. Ben & Jerry's ice cream has developed such a 'dream machine'
3. Most cooling systems operate like this basic cycle: 1. Fluid in gaseous form is sent through a compressor, increasing the pressure of the gas 2. Fluid enters a condenser, where it stays the same temperature, but heat is lost as the fluid turns back into a liquid 3. Fluid travels through an expansion valve, where it has to expand into a low-temperature gas 4. Fluid travels into cooling area (i.e. walls of a refrigerator) where it absorbs heat from the surroundings because it is colder than the surroundings 5. The fluid goes back into the compressor as a warmer gas Basically what happens is the gas, by compressing it and expanding it, can pick up heat from one place (cooling area) and dispense of it in another place (condenser). A compressed gas will release heat, and an expanded gas can absorb it easily. A good demonstration would be to find a T-s (temperature-entropy) diagram and follow the path of the fluid through the temperature changes. Any time entropy increases in the fluid, it is gaining heat, and any time entropy drops, it is losing heat. In your sci-fi story, you could use your imagination and find some radical ways to change the cycle to make it literally out-of-this-world...
4. The following is a very basic explanation of the workings of a fridge. In a fridge, a low boiling point refrigerant gas (used to be Freon), is compressed by the compressor. The high pressure gas is cooled and condensed by the kitchen ambient temperature in the coils at the back of the fridge to give a high pressure liquid refrigerant. (The cooling and condensation of the refrigerant will increase the kitchen temperature somewhat) The high pressure liquid refrigerant is then expanded to low pressure by a special valve and the resultant partial vaporisation of the refrigerant causes a considerable drop in its temperature to near its normal boiling point (the Joules-Thompson Effect'). The cold vapour/liquid mixture passes through the coils of the cold box in the fridge and heat is removed from the fridge interior and its contents. When the inside of the fridge reaches the thermostat set temperature, the system shuts down and restarts as temperature tends to increase again.. The process of heat exchange in the fridge re-vaporises all of the liquid refrigerant and the low pressure, warmer vapour is returned to the compressor to begin the cycle again. (I have worked on LNG units using Cryogenic refrigeration methods. The refrigerant consisted of a mixture of different low boiling temperature liquids called 'Multi-Component Refrigerant..MCR'. These were used as above but, in a cascade system, where each refrigerant produced a low enough temperature to condense the next lowest in the mixture until a Cryogenic temperature of -165°C was achieved, (to which temperature the Natural Gas was also cooled and liquefied (under high pressure), during the stages of refrigeration). I am telling you this in case you'd like to include 'Cryogenic Freezing' into your Sci-fi story. (More detailed info is available should it be required).