Performance of a clothes drying cabinet by utilizing waste heat from a split-type residential air conditioner

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIn the present paper a study on the performance of clothes drying cabinet by utilizing waste heat from a split-type residential air-conditioner (RAC) has been carried out. A drying cabinet with a volume of 1 m 3 has been designed and fabricated. The waste heat from the condenser of the RAC with power of 800 W was utilized as a heat source. In the experiments, the RAC was operated to keep a conditioned space at 20°C. The clothes dried made of pure cotton with initial weight varied 3.05 kg, 5.25 kg, 6.21 kg, 8.22 kg, and 10.22 kg. Two different inlets, single inlet and multi-inlets, has been tested. The results show that the drying time varies from 80 to 410 min. For single inlet the averaged drying time, optimum initial weight, optimum drying rate and optimum SMER was 242 min, 6.21 kg, 0.868 kg/h, and 2.345 kg/kW h. On the other hand, the drying chamber with multi-inlets the averaged drying time, optimum initial weight, optimum drying rate and optimum SMER was 222 min, 8.22 kg, 0.922 kg/h, and 2.492 kg/kW h. Thus, the present drying cabinet should be operated with multi-inlets and the initial weight varies from 6 to 8 kg.

Utilization of Air Conditioning Heat Waste as Cloth Drying Energy Source

“…Some parts around the house, such as windows, balconies, garages, front gates, and others are used to dry clothes. This drying method interferes with aesthetics [6].…”

“…Clothes drying is one of the important applications in drying [10], it is applied in daily life [11] and is one of the domestic sector that consumes very large amounts of energy [6]. Household clothes dryers are one of the most energy-efficient appliances in the housing sector [12].…”

“…Conventional domestic electric dryers are too expensive and inefficient. Innovations to reduce energy loss and heat recovery are important research topics at this time [6]. The growth of the laundry business in Indonesia uses electricity, kerosene, and natural gas as energy sources.…”

“…AC is widely used in Indonesia as an air conditioner. Research on the use of AC heat for drying clothes has been carried out for experimental studies [9], investigations of aspects of thermodynamics [15], performance with cabinet dryers [6], potential energy utilization [14], closed-cycle cycle drying [16] and making dryers portable [17].…”

Evaluation on Expressions for Optimum Intermediate Condition of Two-Stage Vapor Compression Refrigeration Cycle

“…Several studies related to enhancement of energy efficiency of VC refrigeration cycle can be found in literature. Some techniques are heat recovery equipment [1,2], installing internal heat exchanger, multi-stages cycle, etc.…”