THE
CARRIER ABSORPTION REFRIGERATION MACHINE A review of its Development and Manufacture in the UK by J A E Heard. |
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J A E Heard (known as Archie) joined Carrier Engineering Co. of London in the 1920s and trained in the USA before working in India. His account of the time he spent supervising the installation of the air conditioning system at the Khasbagh Palace in India is both informative and amusing. He served as a Lt-Col in India during WW II; afterwards returning to work in London. He became Sales Director and later Managing Director, continuing with Haden Carrier until his retirement. Archie Heard became the first chairman of the Heritage Group (which was previously known as the IHVE Archaelogy Working Party) |
With
the second world
war ended the Carrier Engineering
Company returned from evacuation at Boldney to resume
their old offices
at 24
Buckingham Gate London SW 1. Early in 1946 the
question of
refrigeration
machine manufacture in UK caused much detailed
discussion. Before the
war
Carrier Engineering Company had imported the
compressors of the Carrier
Centrifugal Refrigeration machine and the manufacture
of the condenser
and
evaporator had been arranged in UK. However, this
policy had one
disadvantage
in 1946 the dollar requirement for the import of the
compressor.
Therefore a
full investigation was made of the types and sizes of
compressors used
in the
years prior to the War with a view to the manufacture
of the compressor
in the
UK. The investigation showed that the number of any
particular type and
size
was low and that, therefore, the production would be
one-off with the
production order book not very attractive to any
manufacturer. While these centrifugal Refrigeration investigations were proceeding a visit to the United States revealed that Carrier Corporation had been concentrating during the War on the new development of absorption refrigeration. The principles of the absorption cooling cycle were recognised by Nairn as early as 1777. In 1850, Ferdinand Carré succeeded in making a continuous heat operated absorption machine using ammonia as the refrigerant and water as the absorbent. The refrigerant – absorbent combination was the only one which attained commercial importance during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its popularity had declined because the use of a volatile component in the absorbent is conducive to high cost and poor efficiency and the hazardous nature had precluded its use in air conditioning. Its application had been restricted to commercial and industrial system with availability of low cost steam and in domestic refrigeration where the operating cost is not too large a factor. The Safety Car Heating and Lighting Company produced a small heat operated machine for refrigerated freight cars, using sulphur dioxide as the refrigerant and silica gel in the role of solid refrigerant. Williams
Oil-O-Matic
developed a
water chilling machine, capacities between 12 and 35
tons for air
conditioning
using methlyne chloride as the refrigerant and
dimethyl ether of
tin-ethylene
glycol as the absorbent.
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Mars Slough c1949 |
Servel Inc. pioneered a
small
absorption unit, 3 to 5 tons, using water as the
refrigerant and
lithium
bromide as the absorbent.
A
A Berestneff of Carrier Corporation headed an
extensive research and development programme to
realize the great
potentialities of the absorption refrigeration
principle. The programme
was
completed during the Second World War and
an
economical absorption
machine for
heavy-duty water chilling service was made
commercially available and
ready to
compete with modern compression machinery.
As a result of a visit
to the
States in the autumn of 1946, Carrier Engineering
Company decided to
manufacture the Carrier Absorption Refrigeration Machine
in UK, its
factory was
capable of the manufacture and there would be little or
no need for
dollar
requirement for import of parts.
The original 1946 design was for 150 ton capacity, and used lithium bromide as the absorbent, was designed to chill water returning from the air conditioning coil. The machine was therefore an OPEN TYPE and all connections between it and the chilling surface had to be vacuum tight. This precluded its use in connection with either water spray type dehumidifiers without an intermediate exchanger or with long chilled water connections. At Carrier Construction Company Wembley where the first 16B machines were produced, there had been considerable problems in post war UK to obtain material and production methods to follow US standards, but eventually by 1949 the first 16B5 machine was on test (eventually in 1950 this particular machine was installed for the first TV studio at Lime Grove) and its success was followed during the next five years by the manufacture of twenty two machines for clients as diverse as J Lyons & Co, I.C.I, Anglo Iranian, Iraq Petroleum Company. |
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Lyons Greenford 1950 |
During this period the limitations of the open type machine forced Carrier Corporation to design a closed machine with the chilled water circuit being completely within the machine thus cutting out the necessity for vacuum type connections external to the machine. The change to the closed machine 16C was made in 1956, including dispensing with the two-stage steam and water purge, replacing this with a lithium bromide solution purge and at the same time cheapening the machine construction by dispensing with a considerable quantity of stainless steel. Thirty four (34)C type machines were manufactured and installed by Carrier Manufacturing Company up to the year 1962. Machines were designed up to 500 tons capacity. Although in 1962 the 16E Type machine was developed, very few machines were produced either in UK or USA. In fact the next major change from the 16C Type was the 16H machine. This was a major attempt to make the machine hermetic and these latter machines were tested at Carrier Construction Company Wembley with a mass spectrometer. Machines were now designed up to 1000 tons capacity. |
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Pascall Mitcham 1951 |
From 1961 to 1971 thirty six (36) machines HA Type of various sizes were manufactured and installed while from 1971 to 1976 twenty six (26) JA Type of various sizes and sixty three (63) JB Type were manufactured and installed. However,
during this
period, the UK cost of production
was considerably higher than that in the USA and
since there was no
longer any
difficulty with dollar exchange, all Carrier
Absorption Refrigeration
machines
are imported from the USA for UK and Europe.
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