At school, we need some eqipment for the production of a nitrogen laser. It is not a difficult thing to build, but it requires evacuation of a plexiglass laser cavity. The designer says a small refrigerant compressor will be adequate for the job. I asked my boss at my part-time job if he had any small refrigerant air dryers that he didn't need, to salvage a working compressor out of. He gave me a small 15 cfm unit, with a 1/6 hp Copeland compressor in it (Copelaweld?) Anyway, after turning it on, I discovered that the dryer was working fine, at least according to the suction gauge which was reading about 40 psi (R-12 system). That got me thinking that maybe I could use this dryer for another project, a liquid cooling system for a laser. My professor says it needs to have about 50 watts of cooling capacity. I was wondering if this dryer would have the capacity to remove 50 watts worth of heat from coolant circulating through it (water probably, with glycol).The dryer's spec'd out at 15 cfm @ 100 psi @ 100F inlet temperature. The inlet and outlet ports are only 3/8" copper tubing, which is a pretty flow limited system, I know. I have no clue how to calculate how much heat energy is removed from 15 cfm of air @ 100 F @ 100 psi, to bring it to about 40F. If we can flow water through it constantly, or pre-chill a tank full of water beforehand, it might do the trick, otherwise, I'll just evacate the system and use it as a vacuum pump as originally intended. The laser will not be on for more than a few minutes at a time. Is there a simple way to estimate the cooling cpacity of a 1/6 hp R-12 system? Sorry if this is too technical a question, but I though maybe some HVAC guys here had some handy formulas. Thanks.
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