Recently, with the intensity increase of the inner heat sources, more and more spaces need cooling all year around, such as telecommunication base stations and internet data centers (IDCs). Using the outdoor free cooling during winter and transition seasons is an important way to cut down the electricity bill of this kind of spaces. A novel multifunction air conditioner (AC) system is proposed in this paper. It works according to the temperature difference of indoor and outdoor: when the outdoor air temperature is much lower than the indoor air temperature, the combined system will work as a heat pipe; when the outdoor air temperature is higher than the indoor temperature, the combined system will work in vapor compression refrigeration mode. Otherwise, the operating mode of the combined system is decided by energy efficiency ratio of vapor compression refrigeration cycle and heat pipe cycle. The proposed combined ACs were used in several real mobile base stations to check the performance. The results indicate that the combined AC can maintain the indoor temperature at the set-point and run smoothly, and the annual energy saving rate is 30-45% compared to traditional ACs.
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