Performance of a clothes drying cabinet by utilizing waste heat from a split-type residential air conditioner

In the present paper a study on the performance of clothes drying cabinet by utilizing waste heat from a split-type residential air-conditioner (RAC) has been carried out. A drying cabinet with a volume of 1 m3 has been designed and fabricated. The waste heat from the condenser of the RAC with power of 800 W was utilized as a heat source. In the experiments, the RAC was operated to keep a conditioned space at 20 °C. The clothes dried made of pure cotton with initial weight varied 3.05 kg, 5.25 kg, 6.21 kg, 8.22 kg, and 10.22 kg. Two different inlets, single inlet and multi-inlets, has been tested. The results show that the drying time varies from 80 to 410 min. For single inlet the averaged drying time, optimum initial weight, optimum drying rate and optimum SMER was 242 min, 6.21 kg, 0.868 kg/h, and 2.345 kg/kW h. On the other hand, the drying chamber with multi-inlets the averaged drying time, optimum initial weight, optimum drying rate and optimum SMER was 222 min, 8.22 kg, 0.922 kg/h, and 2.492 kg/kW h. Thus, the present drying cabinet should be operated with multi-inlets and the initial weight varies from 6 to 8 kg.