Objective
After the first year of the program, the design of the balls and of the mould are achieved, the mould has been manufactured, and first series of balls were produced. The assembling and filling machine was designed.
The testing of the thermal and mechanical performances of the components of the balls, as well as their durability, has been partly realised, and the testing program is in a good way.
During the second year of the program, the manufacturing of the assembling machine was achieved and about one thousand of balls were manufactured. The testing of the mechanical properties of the balls was also achieved.
The heat exchanger prototype was manufactured, and equipped with sensors for the measurement of the temperatures, air flows and pressures. The testing campaign was performed and the assessment of the performances of the heat exchanger was successfully realised.
The new heat exchanger will allow the realisation of light installations, suitable for small surfaces, even for private houses.
The aim of this project is to develop and set up a new design for air conditioning systems. One of the technologies used for large air conditioning systems, is the storage of ice enclosed in plastic balls. Those ice balls have a special design so that they can expand during the freezing of water into ice. They are stored in large tanks containing a solution of water and glycol. One part of this solution is pushed away in an expansion vessel during the expansion stage of the balls. In the new system, the ice balls will be re-designed in order to be more rigid, and also to provide a better heat exchange rate with the outer fluid. Moreover, they will be filled with a foam that will absorb the expansion of ice. This should prevent from using a bath of water and glycol to store them, and will give rise to two major improvements: * The ice balls may be stored in dry stacking in light structure tanks. * Air will be used as cooling fluid: This last innovation will simplify the design of the whole air conditioning system, using only one circuit for the cooling fluid, instead of the three circuits generally used. The aims of the project will be to optimise the material, shape and dimensions of the ice balls, to assess the feasibility of the heat exchange system, and to design the manufacturing process for the air conditioning package. The result will be an European product, able to compete and the world-wide market with the American and Japanese systems. This system will be economical and user-friendly, through the reduction of energy consumption and the use of a clean cooling fluid.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
You need to log in or register to use this function
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
75011 Paris
France