Portable air conditioner-The heat arrives and you urgently need an air conditioner … without a doubt, laptops are not the most efficient option but if you do not do well to perform a fixed installation, portable air conditioning can be your solution.
But is a portable air conditioner really a useful solution? In what cases is it not advisable? How to calculate the power? We will describe what are the main characteristics that you have to take into account to choose:
Table of Contents
Portable air conditioning operation
The portable air conditioner cools the air of a room by exchanging heat in a circuit through which circulates a refrigerant gas that performs a condensation-evaporation cycle driven by a compressor.
Installation
Its installation is very simple, since the equipment is very compact. Just keep in mind that for their operation they need to expel the hot air generated to the outside by means of a tube.
For this reason, for the connection of the tube , it is important to place this equipment near a window where we can attach the outlet tube.
Double tube systems
There is a type of portable air conditioner that has a double tube. These airs are more efficient and cool the stay in less time. They are more expensive and a little more complex to install. One tube serves for the expulsion of hot air, and the other for the capture of outside air. In this way the air already cooled is not expelled to the outside.
When is a portable air conditioner useful?
The advantages of this type of air are that they are very compact and easy to install . They can take you out of a hurry if the heat has already been thrown on you and you do not have the possibility of installing a fixed air.
However, we must bear in mind that these airs are much less efficient (spend more), do not distribute the air well in large rooms and are quite noisy.
In short, a portable air conditioner is useful in small rooms and in cases where we do not have the possibility of a fixed installation. If you want to refrigerate more than one room, it is better to have a fixed air.
We discourage this type of air in bedrooms , since the fact that the compressor is integrated into the device, makes them very noisy and have vibrations , which can be very annoying if we want to sleep. In these cases, it is better to think of a fixed air with split.
Calculation of the power
To calculate the power, we must make a complex calculation of heat transmissions but to have a first quick approximation we can establish the following values:
- 100 BTU / h per m 2 If you do not have many windows or walls with southern exposure.
- 125 BTU / h per m 2 in an intermediate case of windows and walls southern exposure.
- 150 BTU / h per m 2 in the case of windows and walls have enough in southern exposure.
In the case of a home with little southern exposure, we take the value of 100 BTU / h per m 2 :
- For a stay of 15m 2 we would need an air of about 1500 BTU / h.
- For a room of 30m 2 we need an air of approximately 3000 BTU / h.
Conversions of units:
- A frigoría is equivalent to a negative kcaloría.
- For the American system, one BTU equals 0.252 kcal.
- Approximately 4 BTU equals a frigoría.
- 860 BTU / h are 1 kW thermal power required.
So for 1500 BTU / h, we would need a 1.75 kW thermal equipment. And for 3000 BTU / h, we would need a 3.48 kW thermal equipment.
Other parameters in which you must set before choosing
To choose, it is important that you look at the performance of each model. The cooling performance of an air conditioner is measured with the EER parameter .
EER = Refrigerating power supplied / Electric power consumed : ( See more about the EER ). The higher it is, the more efficient and less consumed our device will be.
Another important parameter is the maximum decibel level . We have already explained that this type of equipment is quite noisy, so choosing one as quiet as possible, is an important factor to consider.
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