Heat Exchanger with 3/8 lines

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Paso One

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Has anyone converted a old roof top air conditioner condensor to be used as a heat exchanger??? I took the old condenser and put pex fittings on the inlet and the outlet of the unit It has two seperate sections each approx 24 inch by 48 inch It seems to get very warm but with the two large fans it is easily cooled. It has 3/8 lines coming in and leaving. Is that adequete?? Any one got any info on the HX with such small lines. 165 degrees in 105 out.
 
You need more volume of heated water to flow into the makeshift condenser.

That means you need to significantly boost the pressure in order to achieve that volume. However, it the fluid is moving through the exchanger too fast, it doesn't spend enough time in the finned portion to transfer enough BTUs.

You'll have to play with it regarding pressure, flow rate, and the amount of BTUs rejected in the exchanger.

Steve
 
condenser coil HX

The best fix for what you are trying to do is to recircuit the coil. You need three or four parallel paths for the water to follow. Look at the coil and divide it into sections, usually the easiest is to use each row of tubes as one circuit. That way you can make a manifold out of 7/8 or 1 1/8 OD copper tube by drilling holes in it to match the diameter of the small tubes with the same spacing as the coil. Then silver solder the manifold in place, do the same on the bottom and walla you have a coil with larger flow capacity. Done it a few times with Refrigerant 22 condensor coils with 200-300 PSI pressure no problem. Copper silver solders well with out flux, just clean well and use phos copper or low silver content solder, it fills bad joints real good. I made a heat reclaim coil to heat domestic hot water out of 7/8 manifold tubes and 1/2 OD tubes in between, mounted it about 2 inches above the wood stove and piped it into the element holes on an old electric water heater tank. Worked for almost 20 yrs till tank went bad. Looking for a tank now to replace it. Coil however is still like new.
 
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