UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

COURSE INFORMATION COURSE TITLE: MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRACTICE IV (BDA 28101) TOPIC: AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM 1. OBJECTIVES After completing the experiment, students shall be able to understand the air conditioning processes.

2. EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT Proton Saga. 3. INTRODUCTION Air conditioning is a combined process that performs many functions simultaneously. It conditions air, transports, and introduces it to the conditioned space. Temperature and humidity control as well as air movement are the most important actions involved in operation of an air conditioning system. All these factors have a considerable factor on human comfort.

4. THEORY In refrigeration processes, heat is extracted from a lower-temperature heat source, substance, or cooling medium (refrigerant) and transferred to a highertemperature heat sink. Refrigeration maintains the temperature of the heat source below that of its surroundings while transferring the extracted heat to a heat sink or atmosphere air.

Figure 1 illustrates an air conditioning system which works on the vapourcompression cycle. The heat and work interactions of the processes of the cycle as follows:

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
1. Heat Qo from outside air is absorbed in the evaporator by the evaporation of a liquid refrigerant at low pressure and corresponding low saturation temperature. 2. The evaporated refrigerant vapour is compressed to a high pressure in the compressor consuming work W. 3. Heat from refrigerant Qk is rejected in the condenser to the surroundings at high temperature.

Qk Condenser W Throttle Valve Evaporator Qo Compressor

Figure 1: Illustration of simple vapour compression system.

5. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES DISCHARGING REFRIGERANT GAS

1. Switch off the engine. 2. Prepare the gas regulator by connecting the blue tube (low pressure) at the blue socket and the yellow tube at the center socket. Make sure all the valves are closed. 3. Connect the end of the blue tube to the low pressure connection at the car air conditioning system. 4. For the yellow tube, make sure the end of the tube is inserted in container to avoid the oil spill. 5. After the gas regulator is ready, open all valves. The blue valve at the gas regulator has to be turned anti-clockwise to open while the valve at the end of the blue tube has to be turned clockwise to open. Edition 1/2009 2

UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
6. Wait until all the gas inside the system fully discharges. 7. Dismantle the end of the blue tube from the low pressure connection at the car air conditioning system. DISMANTLING THE CAR AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM

1. Open all the piping connection at the compressor before dismantling the belting assembly. 2. Open the compressor mounting and take out the compressor. 3. Then, dismantle all the piping connection at air dryer. Take out the air dryer. 4. Open the mounting pipes that connect to the evaporator. 5. Go to the front passenger seat and then dismantle the glove box before you can dismantle the evaporator.

6. Take out the evaporator and open it shell and the TEV (Thermostatic Expansion Valve) of the evaporator. 7. Clean up the evaporator using the chemical solvent provided. 8. Leave it for about 5 minutes before spraying the evaporator to clean it up. Then dry up the evaporator. ASSEMBLING THE AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM

1. Assemble the TEV and shell of the evaporator before relocating back to its original location. 2. Reassemble the glove box. 3. Tighten all connection pipes to evaporator. 4. Reinstall the air dryer and assemble all pipes connection. 5. Mount back the compressor and the belting assembly. 6. Finally, connect the high pressure and low pressure pipes to compressor again. VACUUM PROCESS

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

1. Prepare the gas regulator as before, but this time, the end of yellow tube must be connected to the vacuum pump and not to the container. 2. Open both low pressure valves. 3. Wait until the pressure drops to -30 psi (observe the low pressure regulator). 4. Close the low pressure valve (at gas regulator) and switch on the vacuum pump. Leave it for about 15 minutes to check whether the are leaks in the system. 5. If there are no leakages, disconnect the end of the yellow tube from the vacuum and dip it into 15 ml refrigerant oil. 6. Open the low pressure valve at the gas regulator. 7. Wait until all the oil is been sucked into the system. 8. Close all valves. RE-FILLING THE REFRIGERANT GAS

1. Clean the valve at the end of the yellow tube and connect it to refrigerant tank. Make sure all valves are closed. 2. Open the refrigerant tank (anti-clockwise) and purge the yellow tube to make sure there is none inside the tube. Make sure the low pressure valve at the gas regulator is closed. 3. Open both low pressure valves. Start the engine to run the system. Switch on the air condition unit inside the car. 4. Wait until the bubble indicator at the high pressure piping (at air dryer) disappear. 5. Close all the valves and dismantle all the tubes connection.

LEAK TEST 1. Do the leak test along air conditioning system piping using: Leak detector

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Bunsen burner Soap water

6. REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. What are advantages/disadvantages of the refrigerant R22 and R134a? a) Advantages/disadvantages of refrigerant R22 Advantages Disadvantages Avoid leaving a facility out of Possible compressor failure due to age service for a leak or because reconversion it is not scheduled. High efficiency less energy usage, High price of this product. reduced energy costs Possible failure of indoor fan coil No cabling Increased energy costs taking the Self cleaning system thus no need for a triple vacuum performance and efficiency losses into account additional pipe costs work for and components interconnecting

b) Advantages/disadvantages of refrigerant R134a Advantages Disadvantages Do not contain chlorine atom so that Difficulty of maintenance: high slip it afford to undermine the role of that in case of leakage would force the atmospheric ozone total recharge of the installation. Has a good safety performance (non- High losses of the power consumption flammable, non-explosive, non-toxic, of the installation. non-irritating no rot resistance) easier to retrofit refrigeration system Practical ignorance of the behavior of so that the heat transfer performance these refrigerants. is closer

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
R134 a heat transfer performance Must be defined a priori who is better than the R12 which can help responsible for any leakage that the amount of refrigerant greatly requires total recharge of the system reduced. (installer or property).

2. Explain why we prefer to connect tubes to low pressure connection at car air conditioning system compare to high pressure connection?

We prefer to connect tubes to low pressure connection at car air conditioning system compare to high pressure connection because it is any attempt to connect to the high side port as this can cause a can of refrigerant to explode. It is because the refrigerant only can hold a low pressure only. It cannot hold a huge pressure in certain time, so it will damage the system. It is called high pressure for a good reason. The high pressure side can and will pump the refrigerant back into the can of refrigerant and explode in your hands. Furthermore, low pressure connection also much easy to handle than the high pressure connection. It is because low pressure mean the power of air is small and the air friction in system is also small. The higher pressure connection also will damage the part either inside or outside the refrigerant.

3. Dicuss about new technology that is currently uses in the air conditioning system?

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

- Solar Cooling Becomes A New Air-Conditioning System

A research team has designed and built an absorption chiller capable of using solar and residual heat as an energy source to drive the cooling system. The technology used in this machine, which looks like an ordinary air-conditioning system, minimises its environmental impact by combining the use of a lithium bromide solution, which does not damage the ozone layer or increase the greenhouse effect, with a reduction in the use of water by the machine. A solar cooling system that unlike the existing machines on the market, uses an improved absorption mechanism capable of producing cold water at a range of temperatures from 7 C to 18 C when the exterior temperature ranges from 33 C to 43 C. A commercial air condensed absorption machine prove that given an outside temperature ranging from 28C and 34C, the machine can produce cold water at a range of 12 to 16C, with a source temperature at the generator between 80C to 95C. Under these conditions, the cold water produced can be used for climate control applications in houses by combining it with a waterto-air heat exchanger (fan coil).

7. CONCLUSION Give conclusions from the practice. Edition 1/2009 7

UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
From this practical, what can I conclude is the Automobile air conditioning systems is important to learn it is because this system is one of the main systems in our cars. We must to understanding the concept and the way it operate. We also must know certain type of procedure such as THE DISCHARGING AIR REFRIGERANT GAS, ASSEMBLING CONDITIONING SYSTEM,

DISMANTLING THE CAR AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM, VACUUM PROCESS, RE-FILLING THE REFRIGERANT GAS, and LEAK TEST. Through this experimental practice, we can understand more about automotive air conditioning systems. And, we also can applied it ourselves if the problem appear or there are troubleshooting happen.

8.

SUMMARY

Automotive air conditioning system will cool the occupants of a vehicle in hot weather, and have come into wide use from the late twentieth century. Air conditioners use significant power; on the other hand the drag of a car with closed windows is less than if the windows are open to cool the occupants evaporative. There has been much debate on the effect of air conditioning on the fuel efficiency of a vehicle. Factors such as wind resistance, aerodynamics and engine power and weight have to be factored into finding the true variance between using the air conditioning system and not using it when estimating the actual fuel mileage. Other factors on the impact on the engine and an overall engine heat increase can have an impact on the cooling system of the vehicle.

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

COMPRESSOR The compressor is a belt driven pump that is fastened to the engine. It is responsible for compressing and transferring refrigerant gas. CONDENSER The condenser is designed to radiate heat. Condensers must have good air flow anytime the system is in operation. EVAPORATOR The evaporator serves as the heat absorption component.The ideal temperature of the evaporator is 32 Fahrenheit or 0 Celsius. PRESSURE REGULATING DEVICES Controlling the evaporator temperature can be accomplished by controlling refrigerant pressure and flow into the evaporator. RECEIVER-DRIER The receiver-drier is used on the high side of systems that use a thermal expansion valve. This type of metering valve requires liquid refrigerant. To ensure that the valve gets liquid refrigerant, a receiver is used. ACCUMULATOR Accumulators are used on systems that accommodate an orifice tube to meter refrigerants into the evaporator.

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UNIVERSITI TUN HUSSEIN ONN MALAYSIA Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
9. REFERENCE 1) Lab sheet - MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRACTICE IV (BDA 28101) 2) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080714151427.htm 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning 4) http://www.familycar.com/Classroom/ac1.htm

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