Evaporator with cool storage function

Abstract

An evaporator with a cool storage function includes a plurality of flat refrigerant flow tubes spaced apart from one another, and a plurality of flat cool storage material containers each of which contains a cool storage material and is disposed on one side of the corresponding refrigerant flow tube, and is brazed to the corresponding refrigerant flow tube. The cool storage material container includes a container body brazed to the corresponding refrigerant flow tube, and an internal-volume-increasing portion which extends downstream from the container body, which projects downstream from the refrigerant flow tube, and which is greater in dimension in a thickness direction than the container body. An inner fin extending from the container body to the internal-volume-increasing portion is disposed in the cool storage material container. This evaporator is suitable for a refrigeration cycle which constitutes a car air conditioner.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to an evaporator with a cool storage function for use in a car air conditioner for a vehicle in which an engine serving as a drive source for a compressor is temporarily stopped when the vehicle is stopped.[0002]Herein and in the appended claims, the upper side and lower side of FIGS. 1 and 2 will be referred to as “upper” and “lower,” respectively.[0003]In recent years, in order to protect the environment and improve fuel consumption of automobiles, there has been proposed an automobile designed to automatically stop the engine when the automobile stops, for example, so as to wait for a traffic light to change.[0004]Incidentally, an ordinary car air conditioner has a problem in that, when an engine of an automobile in which the air conditioner is mounted is stopped, a compressor driven by the engine is stopped, and supply of refrigerant to an evaporator stops, whereby the cooling capacity of the air conditioner sharply ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009]An object of the present invention is to solve the above problems and to provide an evaporator with a cool storage function whose size and weight can be reduced as compared with the evaporator with a cool storage function described in Japanese Patent No. 4043776, which can efficiently cool a cool storage material, and which can suppress an increase in air passage resistance.

Problems solved by technology

Incidentally, an ordinary car air conditioner has a problem in that, when an engine of an automobile in which the air conditioner is mounted is stopped, a compressor driven by the engine is stopped, and supply of refrigerant to an evaporator stops, whereby the cooling capacity of the air conditioner sharply drops.

However, when the lengths of the cool storage material containers and the refrigerant flow tubes are increased, the size of the heat exchange core section of the evaporator increases, with a resultant increase in weight and deterioration in space saving performance.

Therefore, cooling performance at the time of start of cooling operation drops.

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