Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

Well, my car won't have anything A/C related on it, except for the "intercooler" (yeah, the thing in the dash that I don't know what its name is).

Now, that intercooler deal has an inlet and an outlet. I was trying to figure out a way that I could hook up a bottle in the back of the car and run a refrigerant through the core to essentially give me A/C on demand, but be removable as well.

Problems:

Routing the exit. Do you put a slight restrictor (to not make the ---- completely blow through the core too fast) and dump outside the car, or can you think of a way to re-route the refrigerant?

Refridgerant. Say it's a 10# bottle in the back of the car. What type of refridgerant would work best, and how could I use it efficiently to the point where the whole tank isn't a 10 minute cooling of the car? I'm not looking for a year long system, but something that I could turn on and off as needed on a hot summer day say during a 2 hour drive.

The idea seams pretty simple, but I'm having trouble with the details. Where's the thinkers at? Maybe CSairconditioningADDICT?

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

Refrigeration is the removal of heat. Not the addition of cold. You need the "freon" to pick up the heat and remove it. You would need a condensing unit in the trunk that exhausted the condensor to the outside. Its adding a ---- ton of weight, not worth the time to build, probably will never work right, and a waste of your time to try.

If you wanted to, you would need to size a condensing unit to the evap and area cooling. You could use a thermostatic expansion valve or an accurator if you knew the size. If that is the case, you can run R404a and make that coil in the -20 range easily all day. In theory, you can make your car a freezer. :P Not to mention trying to power it.

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

What Dave's trying to say is that a large heatsink bungee corded to a bag of ice in your passenger seat would be safer, cheaper, more reliable, and cool the car better.

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

Tyler may be onto something.

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

So seeing the blower on one side of this core and my vents on the other side led me to think if I just send something cold through this core I could blow myself, cold style. Exactly like an intercooler.

Am I thinking completely wrong, or should I just rock dry ice and a scented tree in the blower?

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

Yes, you are completely wrong.

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

You got the right idea, but refrigerant isn't cold on its own, it's the expanding and condensing of it that makes an AC system work (as if I even know how an AC system works) so you can't just pour it into the core and call it a day. You're underestimating how hard it is to keep something cold running through that core.

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

maybe just a water/air setup?

if yuou want to be a mad scientist than maybe you can put some ice cubes and salt into the mix. :1

http://www.filecabi.net/video/45348570311.html

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

I'd say a spray bottle of water and then roll down your window.

Re: Homemade A/C, requesting thinkers.
 

ac's work by compressing mad refrigerant.

the refrigerant "heats up" because its so compressed, it doesn't loose any energy, so its "hotter"

this heat energy and compressed refrigerant is taken to the condenser coil, this coil dissipates heat energy thats collected when the gas is compressed


the room temperature compressed air is then taken to the evaporator coil (the intercooler), this coil allows the gas to expand. When the low heat energy gas expands it only has so much energy to disperse across the medium that is the refrigerant so the refrigerant has a net heat energy loss per molecule. This is what makes "cold". that core that the air blows through is just making the ambient air lose enery as the refrigerant is trying to go back to an atmospheric temperature/ an equilibrium with the heat energy of everything in its surrounding environment.

Like dave said, AC isn't some chemical reaction that creates cold, its actually just rapidly removing heat energy from a system. It takes a lot of power/energy to carry all of that heat away, its a really inefficent process. Your best bet is using some gold bond on your nuts and rolling with the heat. I hope that explains it some?