Heat to Electricity Conversion in ACs ?

Probably not feasible economically, but the waste heat could heat or pre-heat the domestic hot water. I'd expect any modern system using joined up thinking to do this already, but then any building that needs aircon wasn't designed with joined up thinking in the first place so I'm probably wrong.
baaad kitty...

Del

Then why not use cold water as the heat transfer fluid instead of air, and simplify the arrangements needed to generate it?

Gooooood kitty.

It is sort of like putting a propeller on your electric meter and using the wind from the propeller to generate electricity!

Many good ideas are frustrated by the realities of the laws of thermodynamics:

First law - You can't get something for nothing

Second law - You can't even break even

Third law - Why try?

These is my personal phrasing of the laws, they seem right to me - but we keep trying to get more for less!

Over 70 years ago it was used to proved hot water so I should think that by now a conversion the electricity is most probable. How economically viable it would be I don't know

Have you Googled it?

It would be difficult to trap the heat efficiently enough to do anything with it without compromising the cooling that is required to condense the AC refrigerant. You might recover some energy with something like a Stirling engine, or with thermoelectric (Peltier) devices, but probably not enough to make it worthwhile.

The "enough to make it worthwhile" is the key here. Certainly any waste heat can be used to generate electricity, and ALL of the heat rejected from an operating A/C unit is waste heat. But the cost to implement an energy recovery system from something like a residential A/C system would far outweigh the revenue gained by the system, so the payback may not even survive the useful life of the components. That said, the larger the system the more economical the recovery system would be, hence the existence of energy recovery systems for large building applications. Do a web search on the term "energy recovery systems" for more information.

Hi atlas,

I think it's worthwhile to be a researching paper,(Particularly if you're a well-educated Eng),,,

"Thanks"