When it's hot outside and you turn on the car, and then the air conditioner, it blasts hot air in your face, thus making you even hotter on the hottest of days. So i think their should be a device, that during the summer months, cools your air conditioner while the car is not on, using a separate battery, but not usng a lot of power. So therefore, when you turn on your car, you are not bombarded with hot air, but with cold.-- cods, Aug 08 2002 Something like a pre-air conditioner, huh? Then make it run off the regular car battery like everything else electronic in the car since it doesnt use much power. It could help cool the air before it gets to the air conditioner even when the air is cool to make the regular AC even cooler. Good idea.-- Bert6322, Aug 09 2002 Um... couldn't you just start the car a bit sooner and wait for it to cool off, rather like how people pre-heat their cars in the winter? While I agree the hot air thing 'blows' *heh* It seems a bit excessive to constantly cool the A/C. What about people who rarely use their car? Now they've A/C'd the thing for weeks without need.-- Aurora, Aug 09 2002 Better just to get a solar A/C for when the car is parked. Or, of course, a <plug> car umbrella </plug>.-- DrCurry, Aug 09 2002 Why is it "better" to use solar A/C or an umbrella than this contraption? Is the goal here to dissuade invention or to support it?-- gen1000, Aug 09 2002 An air conditioner conditioner only cools the initial blast of air; the seats and metal surfaces would still be scorchingly hot, and it will be many minutes before they cool down.
Solar A/C and/or a car umbrella would keep the car cool in the first place. Hence better, at least to this parker of cars in sun-drenched parking lots. Okay?-- DrCurry, Aug 09 2002 Could there be a solution for when the car is parked at your house? In the winter many canadians plug in the car, a blockheater keeps the oil warm to make it easier to start. We used to have an in-line coolant heater that did the same thing, with the bonus being when you started the car up you had heat almost instantly. So, why not a dc powered aux air conditioner that you plug in during the heat waves?-- rbl, Aug 09 2002 I suspect you are right but think the additional explanation was needed rather than just a pronouncement.-- gen1000, Aug 09 2002 Trying to imagine the technology I'd use for this. Perhaps the thing to do would be to simply delay the fan on the A/C until a certain temperature in the TXV / tube was reached. That would certainly help, although some hot air would stll blow out as the blower/fan assembly/big plastic thingy would still have to reach temperature by convection.
Would a peltier provide enough cooling to cool down the evaporator?-- RayfordSteele, Aug 10 2002 I doubt adding anything complex to existing a/c will be useful. My suggestion is to simply divert air flow from the blower fan through a plenum, into the aspirator, and back again until manual control over the selector door or in-vehicle temperature sensor releases the *cooled* air to your passengers.-- reensure, Aug 10 2002 HAVE A SMALL STORAGE SUPPLY OF ALREADY COLD AIR THAT BLOWS OUT AT FIRST THEN WHEN UR A/C IS READY AND COLD IT TAKES OVER AND GRADUALLY FILLS UP THE STORAGE (OR FRIDGE)-- Slayter, Aug 10 2002 Slayter, since any gas cools as it expands, your compresed air need not be cold to start with.-- pfperry, Aug 10 2002 A car's AC unit works by compressing a gas, making it very hot. It is then passed through a radiator (a seperate one from the one that cools your engine) to cool the hot compressed gas. When the gas is allowed to decompress it gets cold. Air is blown over the cold side and is cooled. Since cooling air also pulls out moisture, the air is "conditioned". When you start yuor car, no gas is compressed so it takes a momment to compress->cool->decompress. Maybe a better solution would be to leave some gas in the compressed state so that when you turn on your car, the air will be cool very quickly.
Liquid nitrogen would also speed things up...-- kumpf, Aug 11 2002 Leaving the gas in a compressed state indefinitely would be mechanically quite difficult to achieve. As R-134a is a terribly small molecule and permeates through rubber hose and eventually through the seals, it's hard to contain, even when not under significant pressure.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 29 2002 random, halfbakery