Over cooling a Norcold Refer
I have an 18 year old Norcld 682IM refer that did not come with cooling fans. It works fine at 85 degrees or less but struggles to maintain 40 degrees inside the refer on 90 plus days. After reading m...
Forum Discussion
Gjac wrote:
This was my thinking also turbulent air flow cools much better than laminar air flow that is why I put the fan at the bottom.
Except it doesn't... turbulent air is much less efficient at cooling a heat exchanger. Laminar flow across the surface of the fins will be much more efficient than turbulent air.
During the summer I shot the cooling tubes with an IR gun and got about 120 deg F with 80 deg ambient. There must be an optimal range for the cooling tubes, was hoping someone would know.
The greater the temperature differential between the fins and the ambient air, the more heat the system can reject to the ambient air. There is no ideal number, it simply increases the heat transfer efficiency with greater delta-t. Obviously if the ambient air is very close to the fridge coil temp (think Arizona desert in the summer), there won't be as much heat absorbed by the ambient air as when it's a cool fall day in northern Michigan.
