Ajman University of Science and Technology

Department of Engineering
2014-2015

Graduation Project 1

Portable Air
Conditioner
Group Members:Abdulrahman Altenaiji

200910971

Eisa Ahmed

200911154

Ahmed Bitar

200911468

Mohamed AlObaidli

200911449

Supervisor
1

Dr. Samir Tozin

Table of contents:-

Chapter One
o Introduction .
4
o Objectives

35

Chapter Two
o System Theory
68
o System Components 911
o System Design .
12-13
Chapter Three
o Future work .
14
o Conclusion . 15
o References .16

Chapter 1

Introduction
This is the first part of our two semester long
graduation project.
In this report, we present the research work and design
work of the project.
The goal of this project is to design and build an ecofriendly portable air conditioning unit.
Our advisor gave us a set of design constraints for our
design.
What is Portable Air Conditioner?
Its a Box, which will work as an Air Conditioner with the
ability to take it around with you wherever you go and
enjoy a clean cold air blowing on your face while
enjoying your time out.

Why Portable Air Conditioner?

Imagine you are sitting in your house in a hot summer
day, and you feel like going out, but what stops you is
the hot air outside. Now thats where the Portable Air
Conditioner Comes. You will hold that Box lying nears
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you and go outside, sit where ever you want, and enjoy
the Cold air that will be blowing from the box.

How is it done?
It will be done using a combination of Software and
Hardware.
The hardware will be used to make the air
cold, and then control everything using the software

What are the advantages of it?

Environment Friendly.
o Nothing harmful comes out of it like normal
ACs.
Emirates Society in need of it.
o Due the hot atmosphere in this region.
Multifunctional.
o Can be used as a normal Ice Box and as an AC.
Doesnt need much power
o A rechargeable battery will be used to run it.
Safe.
Easy to use.
o Useable by all ages.

Objectives
Achieving a temperature close to the normal
AC.
Controlling the air flow speed.
Controlling the hardware using software.
Adding LCD screen to show the temperature
and the fan speed.
Chargeable by normal socket and car
battery.
Using an Arduino to do the software.
Make it improvable in the future.

 Making it portable.

Initial Research Work

We began the project by looking at the power
requirement of a of a typical air conditioner unit.
A standard AC uses a compressor to compress.

The Compressor
The compressor used to air condition your car works in
a similar way to the one in the refrigerator in your
kitchen.
The job of the compressor is to move liquid refrigerant
around in a pipe.
The compressor pumps, or forces the liquid from the
evaporator into a condenser and expansion valve, and
then back to the evaporator.
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We found that even a small compressor would require

too much power, so we had to look into a different
approach.

How our project works

The Beginning of the project and first idea

So since we couldnt use a compressor, we came
with an idea of using an ice box, and turning it into
an AC by adding ICE and other components that
will be described below.
So at the begging we had the idea of the box and
showing in the figure bellow, we planned to use
one radiator, one water pump and one fan for the
outtake.
The water pump will be connected to the radiator,
and there will be a fan on top of it, that will be blow
the air out.
And for the intake we would use a copper pipe to
pass the air through, from the intake to the
radiator, and this copper pipe will be inside the box
which will be full of ice, and some water for the
water pump.
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But unfortunately, by applying this design we

werent able to achieve our aim of getting a low
temperature and it wasnt satisfying.
So we made modifications to our project which
changed it completely.

Our Project by the end:So after trying the first idea and testing it
and not getting the results we wanted, we
came with these modifications (Shown in pics
below)

We had to use 2 radiators instead of 1 radiator

only, and instead of 1 fan for the outtake, we would
have 1 fan for the intake and 2 fans for the
outtake.
And what we did at the beginning was by dividing
the box into 2 champers, and on one side we have
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the intake fan, and it will blow the air inside the
box, this air will go through the ice, and the then
through the radiator which we placed in between
the 2 champers,
And then the air will move into to the 2nd champers
and go through the ice again and into a second
radiator, and on top of this radiator we have 2 fans
which will be used for the outtake. We used 2 fans
instead of 1 fan because our project idea was to
make it useable by 2 users in a golf cart.

Results

10

11

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13

14

15

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Plot:-

Temperature change in time

25
20
20
1819
15
15
13
12
10
10
7 7 8
6
6
5
0
6.9444444444444441E-3

Temprature

21

Project Features
The basics features for this design
were:
1-Must be portable; weight must not exceed
15Kg.
2-The size should be no bigger than 60cm x
40cm x 40cm.
3-The unit should be powered by a 12V
rechargeable battery, no more than 5000m
Ah.
4-The unit should be able to operate for 3
hours continuously on one charge.
5-The unit must display the temperature of
the output air, and the ambient air.

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Specifications
So after testing the project and getting the
results we put up these specifications,,
1-The outcome temperature is 20 *C lower than the surrounding
temperature.
2-We can put up to 6.5kg of ice.
3-It weight 4.9kg empty and 11-12kg full with ice.
4-The Ice takes around 1hour and 30min to melt.
5-It need 3.5Liters of water divided between the two champers.
5-The ice can last for 1day when idle.
6-We can get cold air for 2 hours when running continuously.
7-The measurements of the box are 45cm long, 27cm wide,
32cm Height.
8-The battery last up to 2 hours and half when running
continuously.

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Chapter 2

The System
System Theory
Heat Exchange
What is a heat exchanger?
Suppose you have a gas central heating furnace (boiler) that
heats hot-water radiators in various rooms in your home. It
works by burning natural gas, making a line or grid of hot gas
jets that fire upward over water flowing through a network of
pipes. As the water pumps through the pipes, it absorbs the
heat energy and heats up. This arrangement is what we mean
by a heat exchanger: the gas jets cool down and the water
heats up.
A heat exchanger is a device that allows heat from a fluid (a
liquid or a gas) to pass to a second fluid (another liquid or gas)
without the two fluids having to mix together or come into
direct contact. If that's not completely clear, consider this. In
theory, we could get the heat from the gas jets just by throwing
cold water onto them, but then the flames would go out! The
essential principle of a heat exchanger is that it transfers the
heat without transferring the fluid that carries the heat.

Photo: How a simple heat exchanger works. A hot fluid (shown

in red) flows through a tube coiled inside a larger shell through
which another, colder fluid (shown in blue) is running in the
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opposite direction. Heat is

exchanged by the fluids: the hot
fluid cools down and the cold fluid
warms up, without them actually
coming into contact and mixing.

What are heat exchangers

used for?

You can see heat exchangers in all

kinds of places, usually working to
heat or cool buildings or helping
engines and machines to work more
efficiently. Refrigerators and air
conditioners, for example, use heat
exchangers in the opposite way from
central heating systems: they
remove heat from a compartment or
room where it's not wanted and
pump it away in a fluid to some
other place where it can be dumped
out of the way.
In power plants or engines, exhaust gases often contain heat
that's heading uselessly away into the open air.
That's a waste of energy and something a heat exchanger
can certainly reduce (though not eliminate entirelysome
heat is always going to be lost). The way to solve this
problem is with heat exchangers positioned inside the
exhaust tail pipes or smokestacks.
As the hot exhaust gases drift upward, they brush past
copper fins with water flowing through them. The water
carries the heat away, back into the plant. There, it might be
recycled directly; maybe warming the cold gases that feed
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into the engine or furnace, saving the energy that would

otherwise be needed to heat them up. Or it could be put to
some other good use, for example, heating an office near the
smokestack.

System Components
Radiator
A radiator is a type of heat exchanger. It is designed to transfer
heat from the hot coolant that flows through it to the air blown
through it by the fan.
Most modern cars use aluminum radiators. These radiators are
made by brazing thin aluminum fins to flattened aluminum
tubes. The coolant flows from the inlet to the outlet through
many tubes mounted in a parallel arrangement. The fins
conduct the heat from the tubes and transfer it to the air
flowing through the radiator.
The tubes sometimes have a type of fin inserted into them
called a tabulator, which increases the turbulence of the fluid
flowing through the tubes. If the fluid flowed very smoothly
through the tubes, only the fluid actually touching the tubes
would be cooled directly. The amount of heat transferred to the
tubes from the fluid running through them depends on the
difference in temperature between the tube and the fluid
touching it. So if the fluid that is in contact with the tube cools
down quickly, less heat will be transferred. By creating
turbulence inside the tube, all of the fluid mixes together,
keeping the temperature of the fluid touching the tubes up so

26

that more heat can be extracted, and all of the fluid inside the
tube is used effectively.

Transistor
A transistor is a miniature electronic component that can do
two different jobs. It can work either as an amplifier or a switch.
And in our project we used the transistor as a switch.
When used as switch. A tiny electric current flowing through
one part of a transistor can make a much bigger current flow
through another part of it. In other words, the small current
switches on the larger one. This is essentially how all computer
chips work. For example, a memory chip contains hundreds of
millions or even billions of transistors, each of which can be
switched on or off individually. Since each transistor can be in
two distinct states, it can store two different numbers, zero and
one. With billions of transistors, a chip can store billions of zeros
and ones, and almost as many ordinary numbers and letters

Arduino
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use
hardware and software. It's intended for anyone making interactive
projects.
ARDUINO BOARD
Arduino senses the environment by receiving inputs from many sensors,
and affects its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other
actuators.
ARDUINO SOFTWARE
You can tell your Arduino what to do by writing code in the Arduino
programming language and using the Arduino development environment.

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 Temperature sensor LM35

The LM35 series are precision integrated-circuit temperature sensors,
whose output voltage is linearly proportional to the Celsius
(Centigrade) temperature.
The LM35 thus has an advantage over linear temperature sensors
calibrated in Kelvin, as the user is not required to subtract a large
Constant voltage from its output to obtain convenient Centigrade
scaling. The LM35 does not require any external calibration or
trimming to provide typical accuracies of 0.255C at room
temperature and 0.755C over a full 55 to +150 C
5 temperature range

3Fans
Wires
switches
Water pumps
Bread Bored

Pipe
Ice Box
Diode
Resistors

28

System Design
System Sketch (first sketch)

29

 System Sketch (Last skecth)

30

System Flow Chart (first)

31

The system will start with the fan at speed 1,

We will have 3 push buttons to control 3 speeds,
1,2,3
And we will have an LCD screen to display the fan
speed and also The Temperature reading that it
will get from the heat sensor.

System Flow Chart (Last)

32

Code
33

Chapter 3

Future Work
34

 Adding Solar Panel

o By Adding Solar Panel we can charge the
battery at any time, and therefor; get rid
of the need of charging the battery
before going out, and it will make the AC
run as long as there is sun.

Making a Wireless Controller

o By using wireless controller it will easier
to turn OFF or ON the AC, while being a
bit far.

Make it a smart machine

o Make it smart by being able to recognize
a sort of voice command.
o Make it able to turn ON or OFF or change
the fan speed depending on the
temperature in the camp.
o Adding motion sensors or pressure
sensors so the fans would turn On or OFF
automatically.

35

Conclusion
We got to our object of achieving a low
temperature.
We were able to display the temperature on
the LCD screen.
We were able to maintain the temperature for
a good period of time.
The hardware was controlled by the software
like what was explained in the previous point.
We used an Arduino to do the software.

36

References
http://www.arduino.com
http://motorshielddatasheet.com
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howtransistorsw
ork.html
http://www2.ece.ohiostate.edu/~passino/LM35.pdf
http://www/fritizing.com

37