Short 13 - 3 things the condenser does

HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs

Bryan Orr

Training, Careers, Airconditioning, Self-improvement, Hvac, Business, Education, Refrigeration, Heating, Ac, Apprenticeship

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2018

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this short podcast, Bryan covers three things that the condenser does. He also explains where those things happen and what those they mean in terms of system operation.

The evaporator coil does two things: boiling and superheating. However, a condenser does three things: desuperheating, condensing (changing state), and subcooling.

Desuperheating occurs early on in the condenser, at the top. Refrigerant enters the condenser as a highly superheated vapor. Even though we have a few degrees of superheat in the suction line, the discharge line's superheat is a lot greater. (For context, the suction line will feel cold to the touch, but the discharge line will burn you.) The compressor skyrockets the superheat through the heat of compression and sends that refrigerant to the condenser via the discharge line. So, desuperheating reduces the temperature from 160+ degrees to the saturation temperature, about 100 degrees.

In the middle of the condenser coil, the refrigerant stays at saturation. However, it continues rejecting heat. That is because the refrigerant is undergoing a phase change from vapor to liquid; it rejects heat in the form of latent heat even though the temperature stays the same. Once all of that latent heat has been rejected to the air, the refrigerant becomes fully liquid. Then and only then can the refrigerant start to drop its temperature.

The temperature of the liquid refrigerant drops at the bottom of the condenser coil. We call that process subcooling. Subcooling refers to the temperature of a liquid below the saturation point. For example, if the saturation point is at 100 degrees but the liquid refrigerant is 95 degrees, you will have 5 degrees of subcooling. In general, a common subcooling range is 8-14 degrees.

Learn more about Refrigeration Technologies at refrigtech.com.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is a short episode. I guess you probably knew that because you saw that right in the title.
0:07.6	This short episode is about the three things that the condenser does. The evaporator only does two things, but the condenser, no, no, he doesn't do two.
0:15.0	The condenser does three.
0:16.0	So that's what we're going to talk about today, but first we're going to talk about our excellent sponsors.
0:20.0	Those sponsors are refrigeration technologies at refriggedec.com makers of all sorts of great chemicals for the HVAC industry.
0:27.0	And if your supply house doesn't sell them, well then ask them why not and tell them to get you a price anyway.
0:31.0	Tell them you want to see refrigeration technologies, fiber products on the shelf at your local supply house.
0:37.0	Air Oasis, makers of the bipolar and nano whole home purifiers,
0:41.1	UEOI and the Hubs Market, the Thermohygrometers, pressure probes, and
0:45.1	temperature line probes and WRS scales from UEEI. Mitsubishi electric cooling and
0:49.6	heating carrier and also I want to mention my friends from Retro Tech makers of
0:54.6	excellent, excellent blower door and duck leakage testing equipment.
0:59.0	Retro Tech, that's Retro and then TEC. There's no H. I always want to add the H whenever I look it up online, but it's just retro-tech with a C.
1:07.0	All right, so here we go. Three things that the condenser does. First off, let's just compare to the evaporator.
1:12.8	So in the evaporator coil, we have boiling.
1:15.2	They can call it flash gas, whatever,
1:16.6	but it's changing state from liquid to vapor.
1:18.8	And then you have superheating.
1:20.4	But in the condenser, you have three things.
1:22.1	So you start by
1:23.3	D superheating. That's the first thing that happens in the condenser and that actually happens in the top couple passes of a condenser. So if you imagine it starts off as fully vapor and then as it travels down it becomes
1:34.6	liquid. So if you think of gravity you have vapor up high and then eventually it
	...

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