Condensate Calculator
One of the challenges that I faced when designing condensate pumps was answering the question —
How much condensate does an air conditioner produce?
Many would answer, “It depends.” The truth is, since there are so many variables involved, very few people had sought a real means of calculating this value.
The path to answer this question led me down a deep, deep rabbit hole where I learned about psychrometry, humidity ratios, and found myself poring through air conditioner data sheets for information. At times, I would even have to contact their technical support to gather the information!
I collected data from several US cities over a three year period and plugged those values into my calculator to find out how much condensate was produced. With some additional assumptions on how frequently a person would run their air conditioner, tuned with some real life data from my own smart thermostat, I was able to come up with a means of figuring out how long a pump would last in different climates.
This calculator in tandem with the automated pump tester was then able to tell us how much we were accelerating life testing on the pumps on the Pump Lifecycle Tester. This information subsequently informed warranty periods for each pump, and advised future pump design on exactly how much of factor of safety was designed in relative to the real world.
I started off by gathering data from various indoor mini split units, and then researched the psychrometric equations used to determine how much humidity is removed from the air during various cooling scenarios. Then, I plugged these equations into an Excel calculator and narrowed it down to a few inputs after I had made some assumptions.
This first try at a calculator resulted in a single data point of condensation rate with some given inputs. I wanted to find a way to broaden the scope of the calculator to help us further.
