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So I've been learning a lot about latent heat, and how the refrigerant is actually based on this concept. Just like dissolving water into air converts sensible heat into latent heat, spitting out liquid refringent into vacuum, converts sensible heat into latent heat, taking heat away.

I'm trying to wrap my head around air conditioner efficiency. Because, well, some window units are 10-12 eer, and split compressor units are 10-24 eer. While some mini split systems like the lg infinity mini split system, claims to be as high as 42 and 49 seer.

Are the window units less efficient because they are using different more compact parts? is it possible to make an ultra efficient window unit?

So the basic principle behind the air conditioning system is that, the refrigerant is in an enclosed system, and when the compressor creates a pressure difference between the low side and the high side the pressure difference causes refrigerant to boil on one side, and condense on the other side.

I'm noticing that the more powerful systems, create higher pressure differential. I don't know if this is better or worse. On one side, higher pressure difference would move more heat faster, but the higher pressures, require more torque. A compressor creating 400 psi, may not just use double the energy of a compressor creating 200 psi. Or does it? Do electric motors scale linearly or parabolically?

Also. The boiling refrigerant, and condensing refrigerant move heat themselves, in fact, copper tube heat pipes do this passively. The higher pressures the ac operates at, the less work we can do passively?

Wouldn't it be better to create a high flow, high volume ac system with a big condenser, big evaporator and high flow low pressure compressor?

am i just wrong about everything? Do electric motors scale well, and do ac pressures scale perfectly with BTUs?

user2656801
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    Efficiency? based on energy used? Or space cooled per unit time? – Solar Mike Sep 05 '22 at 13:25
  • What does "10-12 eer" mean? I've worked with industrial air conditioning and humidity control systems but never heard of this. – Transistor Sep 05 '22 at 19:48
  • I've looked it up. It's an initialisation for "energy efficiency rating" so it should be capitalised to distinguish it from regular words. Capitals matter! – Transistor Sep 05 '22 at 19:51
  • Window units are less efficient because of design constraints like size and shape. More heat flows back through the units themselves. – Abel Sep 05 '22 at 20:58
  • SEER, EER are really bad indicators of real world performance. In theory, they should give some kind of relative merit for very similar units. But you can't use SEER/EER to compare window shakers to mini splits or conventional central systems because they are used differently and suffer different parasitic losses. SEER is a laboratory standard that uses conditions easy to replicate in a lab, most of which are already airconditioned. – Phil Sweet Sep 05 '22 at 23:06
  • Sorry for confusion Transistor. Uh by efficiency I mean BTUs of heat transfered per watt hour. – user2656801 Sep 07 '22 at 03:10
  • Yeah I noticed the very silly different ratings, I was browsing the air conditioners and some similar models were promising higher efficiently, but actually had higher compressor amperage for the same BTU rating – user2656801 Sep 07 '22 at 03:13

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