Development and analysis of air-conditioning condensate assisted compact cooler unit: a novel approach in condensate recovery

In line with the waste-to-energy conservation strategies, the present study focuses on the design and analysis of a Compact Cooler Unit (CCU) that can efficiently make use of cold condensate generated from air-conditioning plants. Condensate from air conditioners with cooling capabilities of 115 kW and 175 kW, respectively, producing 23 Lh⁻¹ and 35 Lh⁻¹ at temperatures of 15 ℃ and 10 ℃, are used in the study to investigate cabin thermal comfort. Experimental and simulation studies are conducted to analyze the cooling performance of the CCU within a 6 m³ cabin under likely condensate temperatures. A TRNSYS model, incorporating Type 32 cooling components, assesses indoor parameters at water temperatures of 10 °C and 15 °C against EN ISO 7730:2005. Simulation studies confirmed that CCU performed better at 10 °C compared to 15 ℃, and an experiment was carried out at 10 ℃ to validate the simulation results. The simulated results had good agreement with the experiments with a variation of less than 5%. The results show that the CCU can achieve a saving of 37% with a recovered condensate quantity of 25 Lh⁻¹ at 11 ℃, and a payback period of 4.4 years. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the effective utilization of condensate as a sustainable resource for energy-efficient cooling in air-conditioned plants. It is recommended that CCU be fitted wherever the available condensate quantity would be more than 25 Lh⁻¹, and it could be run along with a conventional chiller unit to achieve better thermal comfort with minimum energy consumption.