Coal Fired Air Conditioning?

BlackBetty06 wrote: ↑

Tue. Jan. 15, 2019 9:01 pm

A small absorbtion chiller would be interesting for sure. Granted you are able to give it a somewhat stable load and know what your doing so you dont solidify it. Im assuming you probably know about this type of stuff if you have an absorbtion chiller at work. What are your plans for the condenser water?

Heat the pool! Remove heat from the house, and throw it in the pool. Win-Win imo.

Are you running a heat exchanger or are you planning on pumping pool water directly through the chiller? I’d probably put in another means of dumping condenser heat. If you get a heat wave and your pool hits 100 degrees from the solar and condenser load your not going to like it and neither will the chiller. If you’ve got the money and the means and know how to control a system like this, it could be a cool system. If it all works I’d be curious to see how much coal you are burning to accomplish air conditioning and pool heating.(is the boiler going to be external of the house so you aren’t burning coal to make more steam for air conditioning to remove the heat added to the house from burning more coal?)

Make a dump zone for the excess heat if that is the issue...
night time water to air exchanger for the pool...
Earth coils then in the fall extract the residual heat...
Use the pool water to preheat DHW...
Many ways...

BlackBetty06 wrote: ↑

Wed. Jan. 16, 2019 9:32 pm

Are you running a heat exchanger or are you planning on pumping pool water directly through the chiller? I’d probably put in another means of dumping condenser heat. If you get a heat wave and your pool hits 100 degrees from the solar and condenser load your not going to like it and neither will the chiller. If you’ve got the money and the means and know how to control a system like this, it could be a cool system. If it all works I’d be curious to see how much coal you are burning to accomplish air conditioning and pool heating.(is the boiler going to be external of the house so you aren’t burning coal to make more steam for air conditioning to remove the heat added to the house from burning more coal?)

I would certainly run a heat exchanger for the pool, as it is much cheaper to replace than the chiller when the chlorine eats it.

As for excess heat load on a hot day, I'd be surprised if the pool couldn't dissipate the heat with the cover removed. Even so, I'll have the snowmelt loop that I could "probably" use as a dump zone, assuming it doesn't add heat from solar on the pavement. Definitely going to have a water to air heat exchanger capable of dissipating the full load of the chiller, just in case. Don't want my pool above 90, that's for sure.

Will have the boiler in the basement (for the gravity return of condensate), but will build a room around it that can more or less be isolated from the house and ventilated well with outside air. Maybe even have a provision to place it at slight positive pressure, to aid chimney draft on the hottest of days.

Money and time will be the primary challenges, as having both at the same time is difficult. The place needs other work as well.

I'm quite curious to see how much coal it will use too, but so long as it remains cheaper to run than natural gas DHW and pool heat with electric chiller, I'll be happy. That, and it may be beneficial to get larger coal loads, likely cheaper to buy a whole truckload with Michigan being rather far out from the anthracite mines.

We have a rather large 6,000 st 18 room 116 yr old brick home with 1 pipe steam, 600,000 btu coal fired stocker. When I remarried 25 yrs ago, my wife had a so called pre nup but, not the type most think of. Her deal was she needed A/C. I said but the house is done! She said your a contractor, go figure it out! So I did, I choose "space-pac". The parts are rather expensive, the insulation takes a lot of planning but A , you can do it all yourself! B, It is extremely efficient ! I decided to skip my 3rd floor as no one is there anymore so I ran the main trunks in the 4th fl attic and ran the 3.5" take offs under the slate roof and dropped them down behind the knee walls into the 2nd floor ceilings. No tearing up walls or ceilings! I ran that one season to see if the cold air would drop to the 1st floor and lower that temperature at all. The answer is, not much. So I ran the main trunk lines in the basement and put the take off under the floor and into the 1st floor. This is all been installed now over 20 years and works perfectly. I must say that in July and August the electric bill could push 375 a month for 2 months that's a bargain. My winter bills seldom exceed 90!

nicholaskheinrich wrote: ↑

Thu. Jan. 17, 2019 12:06 pm

I'm quite curious to see how much coal it will use too, but so long as it remains cheaper to run than natural gas DHW

Maybe double check your rates. I know this is a coal forum but, Im not sure anything beats the cost/efficiency (&ease) of NG currently. While exciting to theorize, if you are feeding a 500k boiler anthracite @ 20-40#/hour...
A few things to consider:
A. Where are you putting a 500k boiler? Are you building a CUP?
B. Where are you storing a giant stockpile of coal (~7-14 tn.month)
C. How are you removing and disposing of LOTS of ash(~15% Ash, ie. 1-2 ton of ash/month)

Coal fired air conditioning?

Sometimes I think that’s what I have hooked up in the basement.