Early Water Powered Refrigeration?

I got a alternate tech/science question. Refrigeration is achived by pumping chemicals trough tubes and by letting it expand at a certain point. (I have to admit I need to refresh the details). The way we do it is using electric power. However, I see no reason that running water, muscle power or even wind can't pump a chemical trough a pipe.

Refrigeration would be nice in temperate climate.

So what is the earliest date somebody can put something like this together?
 
i guess it would depend on when the chemical (i don't know what they use) would become readily available
 
Earliest Refrigeration systems used Ammonia, Brfore that poor people used Rags or Pottery evaporation, to cool water.

Rich People used fans blowing over Ice.
Pre 1900 the largest item of trade between New England and India/SE Asia was Ice.
 
I think that the major issue is that the chemictry and physics knowledge to set up a refrigerator and fill it with an appropriate chemical don't really exist until after electricity has come around. Any POD to nove up the date of that physics/knowledge will probably also require/imply moving up the others. Thus, by the time you would be able to build it, water is no longer the only/best option. I could be wrong, though.
 
I watched a special on NOVA about the history of refrigeration and cooling, and they said that some time in the 1600s Cornelius Drebbel demonstrated a cooling process to King James I by "turn Summer into Winter" in the Houses of Parliament, but I can't remember how he did it. Perhaps this could lead to early refrigeration, or if not, then early air conditioning?
 
I watched a special on NOVA about the history of refrigeration and cooling, and they said that some time in the 1600s Cornelius Drebbel demonstrated a cooling process to King James I by "turn Summer into Winter" in the Houses of Parliament, but I can't remember how he did it.


wilcoxchar,

Don't worry, no one else can remember either. :(

Drebbel never revealed how he did it.

Perhaps this could lead to early refrigeration, or if not, then early air conditioning?

Only if Drebbel can be coaxed into revealing his secrets. Maybe an earlier patent system so Drebbel can collect royalties without having to rely on the royal patronage?


Bill
 
To be a good refrigerant, water would have to go from liquid to gas at around room temperature. Only then could it absorb heat and turn into a gas, expand, reject heat and then be compressed to the starting stage.

Since water is an incompressible fluid at room temperature it would be useless as an effective refrigerant.

Finally it pays to be a mech. engineer on this board:D
 
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I don't suggest using water as refrigerant, I suggest using water (or other non-electric power) to propell the refrigerant trough the cycle.

What would a suitable refrigerand be by the way.
 
apologies and my idea for a TL

After rereading the OP I must first apologise for completely misunderstanding the question that was asked.

Of course you could use water wheel to rotate a basic centrifugal compressor to run the refrigeration cycle.

As for refrigerants, the current ones that we use are carbon-halogen compounds that need at least a mid to late 19th century understanding of organic chemistry to be produced. One of the earlier posters mentioned ammonia but that hadn't been invented until 1779 by Priestly. The best candidate for refrigerant in this ATL is sulphur dioxide, a rather easily obtainable gas that even ancient alchemists must have known of.

The next biggest hurdle is the underlying thermodynamic theory. As well evidenced by the AH cliché of having Hero's steam engine being used to usher in a steampunk revolution, heat engines where heat is supplied and work given out are nothing new. A refrigerator is essentially an inversion where work is supplied and heat is absorbed. Therefore to get a working refrigeration all we need is an earlier expansion on the steam engine concept so that the basic fundamentals of thermodynamics are properly understood and codified.

With both these problems dealt with, here is my TL

Somewhere around the 11th and 12th century, a Baghdadi scholar on a bet constructs an Aeolipile and puts it on display to shame his challengers. A budding Arab/Persian genius observes this and is fascinated by its operation. Instead of polymathing his way into genericness, our genius begins to obsess over the core principles of the engine and eventually develops the Carnot Engine (the idealized heat engine).


While musing over his invention he wonders what would happen if the process he has just discovered were to be reversed so that work is put into the system? Upon experimentation, he discovers that he needs a fluid that becomes a gas at close to room temperature. Completely stumped, he stomps off to a coffee house where he regales an alchemist friend of his troubles. The intrigued alchemist mentions that when the oxide of sulphur is cooled enough, it liquefies and it thus might be a good choice for working fluid.
With a solution to thus in hand, our friend retries his experiment and is surprised to find that the cycling fluid actually forces heat to flow from cold to hot, a complete reversal of the natural order. Thus the first proper refrigerating heat pump is created.
In a few decades, we have many heavily insulated water wheel powered cold houses where patrons can receive welcome respite from the great summer heat.
Other than the ridiculously bad writing style what do you think?
 
What about a Hilsch Vortex Tube , using bellows for the compressed air?

The problem is that the system needs a pressure of nearly 100 psi (7 bars) to work, rather difficult for bellows. Even then, it takes about 400 times as much energy to compress the air than to operate a conventional refrigerator.

I believe the earliest refrigeration cycle used compressed air and brine and was invented before 1840. It proved too inefficient to be practical on a large scale.
 

Stephen

Banned
It is posible to make a refrigirater with compressed air, no chemicals. Compress air into a vessel and it will heat up, but if you wait for the vessel to cool down back to rooom temperature when you decompress it it will get very cold. In fact the first refridgeraters did work like this air was sucked out of the compartment decompressing and cooling it, the air the goes into a high pressure radiator to shed heat the compressed air is then relased back into the fridge compartment cooling as it expands. Modern fridges use the same theory the freon gas just makes it more compact and effiecient through the use latent heat and lower pressures. Any machinery which runs oncompressed air has problems with freezing up.
 
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