fridge as an air conditioner?

[chiacchierone]

hey...i have an old extra fridge and i was asking me if pumping the air inside the box through the fridge can work good to chill up....or maybe i should disassemble the fridge and put the copper cool tube inside the box.
r there any extra options? which is better?

 

[UnknownProphet]

Old fridges didn't take into account energy usage and cost a lot to run, if you were to set up the way you are talking it would never turn off and that much energy and will cost you a lot more than if you bought and AC...don't make it harder on yourself just cause you know how to DYI.

 

[chiacchierone]

Old fridges didn't take into account energy usage and cost a lot to run, if you were to set up the way you are talking it would never turn off and that much energy and will cost you a lot more than if you bought and AC...don't make it harder on yourself just cause you know how to DYI.

i just want to know if it works not if is it convenient because i don't pay 4 electricity

 

[Payaso]

Even so, it won't be a good way to cool your grow.

 

[jm420]

no it wont work you would just blow the compessor up,look at it like this
if you leave your fridge door open all nite the room is not cooler but everything in the fridge is warm
wish i didnt pay for electricity

 

[foomar]

If you could get the radiator section outside a sealed room it would work.

With the door open in a well sealed and insulated room like in a closed system , the air temp would slowly rise from inneficiency and motor heat.


Getting the vitals seperated from an old fridge is the challenge , brittle soldered joints and pipework and the reworking/bending needed even with proper smallbore pipe formers often wreck it and lose gas , and the motor may not last long running full time as its way beyond the original design spec , but easy to swap for another of similar size if it dies.

Good to see someone willing to have a crack at this kind of reycling when its easier to buy a bespoke product , but even with no electric cost factored in it may not meet your expectations.



They do however make very useable res chillers if you can strip one out intact and dont mind the ghetto look , mate did one that worked fine for years.

The giblets from a domestic dehumidifier are perfect for smaller resevoirs and easy to rework in comparison.

 

[jm420]

i was thinking chiller as well any threads on that only seen the water cooler ones

 

[MeanBean]

Go for chilling water in the next room in your fridge and running it through a coil and blower in the next'

 

[Holdin']

I'm a HVAC/refrigeration guy, just to validate...

In theory you could modify an old refrigerator to function as an air conditioner. But, really only in theory. You could also build an airplane in your garage, in theory.

Refrigeration equipment is engineered in three main categories: low-temp, medium-temp, and high temp. Low-temp would be like a walk-in freezer, medium is refrigerators and equip for butchers' cut rooms, and high-temp being your conventional commercial/residential air conditioning.

To simply put it....

The standard cycle of a med-temp refrigerator is designed to have ~35-40º air across the evaporator ("radiator"), not 70-80º air. Like someone said in a previous post, the compressor would overheat and shut down, and eventually burn up.

You would have to completely reengineer the refrigeration circuit. Not feasible for even an advanced DIYer and really not logical. Even if you were to chill a large amount of water to be pumped through a coil in conjunction with a blower, I think that the amount of actual cooling achieved would be minimal, and so not worth the trouble - unless you have loads of free time, a relatively small space to condition, and are up for a challenge.

Now, a big old dehumidifier.... that would be much more possible to convert into an air conditioner. Thing is though, air conditioners are really pretty cheap...