Saw something new this week

This week we did the walkthru at a new contract we just were awarded. It was all natural gas fired air conditioning. We usually hate dealing with any filters inside the building but these are all at ceiling level (as opposed to above the ceiling panels) and they are easy to get in and out.

They are also ALL washable electrostatic filters. Not the 5 stage filters we usually install, but a two stage filter consisting of a semi rigid pleated polypropelene that cleans FAST with the right equipment. It will also BLOW OUT fast with the wrong equipment.

This account was tailor made for us.

This gas fired AC is an up and coming technology. I stood between 6 huge condensers about 6 feet apart and carried on a normal cell phone conversation. It wasn't till I was done that I realized the condensers were all running and were almost completely silent.

This is very interesting.

Here's some info:

http://www.swgas.com/gedac/index.php

Great info Tony, Thanks.

I remember many years ago they had natural gas refrigerators.

Now with the refrigerators so energy efficient it would probably not be a good idea to switch that but the a/c....I think I would look into it.

My air conditioner and heater is gas so that is the bulk of my electric bill, gas heating would dramatically lower the electric bill in the winter time so would gas cooling for the summer.

I would like to see what that would cost to convert.

Does it use ammonia for the refrigerant?

I would bet it does. Natural gas cooling systems are not that new a thing. When I used to work for a Dairy, the whole ice cream plant was natural gas. One time it sprung a coolant leak, and they evacuated about a 2 sq mile area because of the ammonia. Also, a lot of the early refrigerators were natural gas, and EVERY travel trailer is propane powered refrigerator, which is the same technology.

RMedbery said:

Does it use ammonia for the refrigerant?

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Thats a good question.

I knew the RV's were propane powered, but I didn't know they used ammonia for coolant.

I helped someone clean a chicken processing plant a while ago. After they were sent through a 30 foot long fryer they were put in a gigantic freezer which was cooled with liquid nitrogen. One of the guys said they were switching to ammonia. Propane heats the ammonia which then rises up these tubes and somehow cools the air around it (in RVs anyway).

Across the bay here they built a cold-storage facility for the Docks and it has Ammonia as coolant. They did have a leak one day and had to evacuate the building. Not sure of the savings but very dangerous using the Ammonia.

Christopher said:

Across the bay here they built a cold-storage facility for the Docks and it has Ammonia as coolant. They did have a leak one day and had to evacuate the building. Not sure of the savings but very dangerous using the Ammonia.

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They should have neutralized it with bleach..

We just had a big fire here in Milwaukee where the plant used ammonia as the refrigerant and they evacuated a large area. From what they were saying is that is a very old not too efficient technology?

I'm pretty sure when refrigeration was invented the first one used ammonia and a heat source. Pretty interesting how a propane flame powers a refrigerator. No moving parts seems like a benefit but I'm guessing the only reason it's used today is to avoid using cheap efficient harmless freon which was ridiculously banned at great cost to the world as a whole.

I allways wondered how a gas that was heaier than air destroyed the ozone layer at 70K feet.

Alexy said:

I allways wondered how a gas that was heaier than air destroyed the ozone layer at 70K feet.

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It' liberal Magic, (with a little nudging of Dupont whose patent on R12 was about to run out) Like I said before eliminating competition through government regulations is immoral.

tomtucson said:

I'm pretty sure when refrigeration was invented the first one used ammonia and a heat source. Pretty interesting how a propane flame powers a refrigerator. No moving parts seems like a benefit but I'm guessing the only reason it's used today is to avoid using cheap efficient harmless freon which was ridiculously banned at great cost to the world as a whole.

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Early refridgerators had to be kept out on the porch. A lot of people died from them. (But when they were dead they kept for a long time because their families could put them in the new-fangled refridgerator.