Self Evaporating Portable Air Conditioners

When you decide to buy a portable AC but the hassle of draining and emptying a water tray is a no-no, a self evaporating portable air conditioner is the answer!

As innovation and technology moves ever forward in the realm of indoor climate control, one of the old irritations of owning and using a portable cooler has been eliminated for good.

You can now say goodbye to emptying that water tray periodically when the unit emits its shrill alarm and shuts itself off because it's full. Fully self evaporative portable AC units have circumvented that problem in a clever way.

Let's take a look at how it achieves this monumental feat of innovative genius:

How Does a Self Evaporating Portable Air Conditioner Work?

To understand how these coolers work, we first need to know a bit about how air conditioning does its thing.

Conventional air conditioning units create cold air by transferring heat from the warm air taken in from the room to refrigerant coils, cooling the air that is circulated back into the room.

One of the by-products of this process is that moisture present in the air condenses on the cold coils inside the unit. That condensation builds up, forming large droplets of water that drip down into a catchment area, which is generally a deep tray.

In self evaporating equipment, that condensed water is reused by evaporating it off the coils. That aids in the cooling process, just like evaporating perspiration from your skin helps you to cool down when you feel a breeze.

The evaporated water vapor is then exhausted out of the unit through the pipework to the outside along with the hot air that is also produced by the heat exchange mechanism inside the unit.

Portable AC's do all this inside a single unit and vent off the hot, moist air through its flexible hose that is connected to a window kit or wall outlet.

Window AC are already mounted in a window so have no need of a vent hose, expelling the exhaust air directly to the outside.

Mini-split or central AC systems expel the hot, moist air through ducting or pipework to an external condenser unit which releases the unwanted hot air into the outside atmosphere.

What Are the Advantages of Self Evaporating AC?

There are two main advantages to this self evaporating system incorporated inside portable AC units. These are:

No need to empty a drip tray periodically
Increased efficiency and economy

Let's look at these advantages in a little more detail.

No More Emptying or Draining

Since the majority of condensate is re-evaporated, re-used and expelled as water vapor, there is little or no remaining water to drip into a catchment tray. That is good news for owners of older portable AC equipment who are constantly irritated by needing to periodically empty their machine's water catching tray.

This is done either proactively by keeping a check on the water level in the tray or by being rudely reminded by the unit's built-in sensor alarm and the fact that most portable AC units will automatically turn themselves off when the tray is full.

Better Efficiency and Economy

By making good use of the excess moisture build-up inside the unit to boost the cooling capacity of the refrigerant coils (by using the additional cooling by evaporation property of water), self evaporative AC devices literally increase their own cooling efficiency.

This means they need to use less energy to produce the same level of cooling as a conventional AC machine. That reduced energy usage equates to a reduction in electricity consumption, which means slightly lower energy utility bills when using this equipment instead of conventional AC.

Conclusion

Here we have a clever solution to a log-standing problem in an innovative, well-designed cooling solution that works.

By taking advantage of the part of the cooling process that once resulted in filling a water tray that needed to be periodically emptied manually, fully self evaporating portable air conditioner units have been provided with a means to increase their efficiency and reduce running costs.

This is a step forward in the progress of better energy economy while also providing owners with one less periodical chore to perform in manually draining and emptying water catching trays, which is a job that is not looked forward to with anything resembling relish or enjoyment!

You can buy these appliances in most larger hardware stores or online as you prefer.