ICA reports exhibiting new energy-efficient, smaller diameter copper tube coil designs from Chinese OEMs

The International Copper Association (ICA) has announced that residential air conditioning products are increasingly being fabricated using smaller diameter copper tubes, especially among OEMs based in China. This was evidenced by the fact that coils from five different OEMs – Gree, Haier, Midea, Chigo and HiSense Kelon – were on display at the MicroGroove Technology booth at the China Refrigeration Expo – CR-2011 in Shanghai, with samples representative of both condensers and evaporators for window-type air conditioners as well for split units, the announcement said.

Speaking from ICA’s MicroGroove stall at the expo, ICA’s Deputy Director of Technology Wenson Zheng, said: “The International Copper Association has been cooperating with OEMs on design strategies for increasing the performance of evaporator and condenser coils. The most spectacular gains in heat transfer efficiency have been realised by decreasing the diameter of the copper tubes in these coils.”

He added that most of the coils were taken from actual production models of residential air conditioners, and that research continued on the design and manufacture of coils with even smaller diameter copper tubes.

ICA has listed the coils on display at the exhibition in the attached table, along with the corresponding applications, cooling capacities and OEMs.

The International Copper Association is an organisation for promoting the use of copper worldwide.