# Aircon using 12v fridge compressor



## CarvenMarven (Jun 4, 2018)

I have been thinking about building an Electric Car, got to the aircon which I consider essential. It seemed like a lot of extra effort to move the compressor to where it could run of the motor or to use an additional motor for the compressor, surely there was an easy way......
The idea I came up with was to use a 12v fridge compressor plumbed into the cars system. This would also allow more freedom with positioning of the compressor potentially making more space for batteries.
Has anyone used a fridge compressor?
Is there any reason it. Wouldn’t work ?
Thanks for your thoughts.


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## boznz (Aug 22, 2018)

Basically it wont have the guts to cool down a car cabin, The inside of a fridge is small and well insulated whereas the sun coming through a car window provides some serious heating (KW) into a much larger area.

I Guess that's not the answer you want to hear.


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## CarvenMarven (Jun 4, 2018)

I figured there must be a reason it’s not done...
It’s just I was thinking if the fridge can make a small area -18 then it wasn’t unreasonable to think it could make a large area 20 degrees.
I didn’t factor in the closed system.
I’m glad I asked and found out before I put the time money and effort into building it to find it didn’t work, so thanks for your input


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## mickqld (Oct 10, 2018)

As already said, the 12volt fridge compressor is way too small to do a car cabin. It could be used to make a cooler box. There are 12volt and 24volts air conditioning compressors easily available that will do the job you want. They are a little bit expensive but they solve your problem and are designed to do the job properly. Generally for a sedan the 12volt compressor will pull about 60 amps while running. So you need a fairly generous battery system for it to work for more than a few hours. I have read that compared to a belt driven compressor they are more energy efficient, if that makes you feel better. This idea is what I am considering.
cheers, Mick


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

If your EV will have a sufficiently high battery voltage, it would make more sense to use an electrically-driven air conditioner from a production EV or hybrid, rather than one which is driven by 12 volts. For instance, a 2004 or later Prius has an air conditioner which is driven by the HV battery, which is not much more than 200 volts in those cars.


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