the price of aluminum had risen by a significant margin from Eden Hamilton's blog

When I arrived in Collierville, Tennessee for the summer of 1986, I was assigned to teach classes to engineers and quality-control personnel employed by Carrier Corporation's residential air-conditioning plant. One of Carrier's engineers raised his hand while I was talking about condenser coils and the advantages of the company's then spine-fin all-aluminum coils and pointed out that the company was abandoning the design and returning to the production of traditional copper tube aluminum-fin coils. Because of this, I wrote The Death of the Aluminum Coil, my second-ever magazine article (which appeared in The ACHR News that year), which was published in The ACHR News. This was my response to the situation.

I ran into the then-president of Carrier Corporation a few months later at a winter meeting, and he inquired as to what I had in mind when I decided to write an article of this nature. Therefore, I explained to him that when two metals that are dissimilar to one another are joined (for example, copper and aluminum), electrolysis takes place, resulting in a constantly deteriorating bond and reduced system efficiency. Afterward, he explained that they needed to make this change in order to remain competitive in the market because the price of aluminum had risen by a significant margin relative to the price of copper at that time.

Why don't we go ahead and do it? Asked his head of engineering, who happened to be standing directly behind him at the time, the then-president received an affirmative response. Upon learning that our conveyor belts were unable to handle the increased load, our head of engineering responded. This micro-channel condensing unit is manufactured by AllStyle Coil Co. and is marketed under a variety of brand names, including Weil-McLain and Williamson. As previously stated, I have been a staunch supporter of single-metal condenser and evaporator coils throughout my professional career. Because of this, I was overjoyed when I discovered my first aluminium micro channel tube at the AHR Expo York booth the year before. They are the wave of the future, and I am beginning to believe that this is also the case. What is the reason for this?

As a result of the fact that multi port tube-channel coils can be significantly smaller than conventional coils, as well as the fact that they retain their efficiency for a longer period of time, the development of high-efficiency designs is possible. Recently passed legislation requiring a minimum air conditioning efficiency of 13 SEER has resulted in a significant increase in the size of most standard copper-tube aluminum-fin units, which many customers find objectionable. Because of this, the only alternative to using aluminium micro channel tube-channel designs is to make the coils deeper, which increases the difficulty of cleaning.

• The fact that all of the exterior aluminum parts of  multi port tube-channel coils are zinc coated, which increases their reliability even further, is another advantage of these coils

• Furthermore, because zinc is a natural anti-microbial agent,  aluminium micro channel tube-channel evaporator coils will be less susceptible to the growth of molds and bacteria than conventional coils in comparison to their counterparts

• This was not intended to be the purpose of the zinc coating, which was instead intended to make it possible for the aluminum components to be assembled and soldered together

• In my opinion, the fact that these coils are simpler and less expensive to manufacture than previous designs will prove to be a tipping point, which will eventually result in widespread industry adoption of this design

  
  

But what if the price of aluminum begins to rise at a faster rate than the price of copper? I'd like to reiterate my recommendation to only use copper coils in your projects. If so, would that put an undue strain on the factory's conveyor belts and other equipment? I just wanted to point out that a dear friend of mine does not agree with my assessment of the success of micro channel tube-channel coils in the industry. I apologize for any inconvenience. The extreme narrowness of the refrigerant channels has him concerned that circulated lubricants will solidify, particularly in heat pumps in northern climates, but he believes that only time will tell whether this is the case.