12v refrigeration internal keel cooler

[George Elliott]

Hi Everyone a while back I made the suggestion to someone who was looking for a 12 refrigeration system that he run the liquid (discharge) lines from the compressor through the boats water tank. That was my project this weekend. It works. First I've got to explain i built the system in '91 as a engine/12v system by putting both evap coils in the freezer plate, it's a big plate. The original 12v compressor was a sea water cooled bd 2.5, the maintenance on the seawater strainer, pump was major and the 1.5 a draw of the pump brought the total load to 6.5 a. Unfortunately the water tank is a good distance away and I used 15' of 3/16" and 25' of 1/4" cu for the hook up, 8' of 1/4" are in the tank. By the time the gas gets to the tank it's barely hot, most of it disipates on ther way. The bd 50 I just put in is running at it's minimum and drawing 2.9 a with a suction preasure of 11 psi. It took 14 hrs to get ice cubes from the slot, for an ice cube tray, I built into the plate, but due to pumping down the system, I'd let it get pretty warm. Anyway, it looks like I just redid Thalia's energy audit. I still need to play with suction preasures and amp draws, but it seems to be working pretty well so far. I've not a clue on pumping losses on all that extra cu, but it's probably running at 125+ psi (didn't put a hi side service fitting in, what you don't know won't hurt you. Will it?) so they oughtn't be too high. At 0 degrees the bd50 is shifitng 200 btus. Does anyone still have preformance data for the bd2.5? I'd be interested, can't find it on the internet, just a range of 200 - 365. Thanks for listening. George