Hitachi, Ltd.

Shunji Sasaki

Kensaku Oguni

Hirokiyo Terada

Kenji Tokusa

Minetoshi Izushi

Makoto Nagai

Hiroshi Takenaka

Yasuji Sakuma

Keiichi Nakamura

Masahiro Ito

Takehisa Yoshikawa

Hiroyasu Yoneyama

Kazuhisa Yagi

Yoshiro Maita

Masaru Kunikata

Futoshi Kawamura

Hideki Okuzono

Atsuhiro Kobayashi

An air conditioner in accordance with the invention comprises a first unit including a compressor and a heat exchanger; a second unit including a heat exchanger; a refrigerant circuit connecting the compressor and the heat exchanger of the first unit, with the heat exchanger of the second unit, through which a refrigerant flows; a refrigerant pressure reduction valve disposed in the refrigerant circuit and provided in the second unit; a control unit provided in the first unit for controlling the refrigerant pressure reduction valve in the second unit.

Air conditioner

A heat exchanger, as mounted on the outdoor unit or indoor unit of an air conditioner system, is formed with a plurality of passages for a refrigerant. To this heat exchanger, there is connected a refrigerant distributor for distributing the refrigerant to the individual passages or for collecting the distributed refrigerant. This refrigerant distributor is constructed by soldering two corrugated plate members to form a refrigerant conduit between the corrugations. Before these plate members are soldered, the refrigerant conduit is either partially constricted to form a throttle portion or partially bulged to form a filter portion by fitting a filter member in the bulging portion when the plate members are soldered. Thus, the refrigerant distributor can set the diversion of the refrigerant to a predetermined ratio by the simple device while reducing the space and lowering the cost.

Air conditioner system having a refrigerant distributor and method of

An air conditioner comprises a first unit including a compressor and a heat exchanger, a second unit including a heat exchanger, a refrigerant circuit connecting the compressor and the heat exchanger of the first unit, with the heat exchanger of the second unit, through which a refrigerant flows, a refrigerant pressure reduction valve disposed in the refrigerant circuit and provided in the second unit, a control unit provided in the first unit for controlling the refrigerant pressure reduction valve in the second unit.

In a high-rigidity structure made of sheet metal, in order to prevent increases of vibrations and noises owing to deterioration of the rigidity caused by decreasing the thickness of the sheet-metal, ribs having a height 10 times or more larger than the sheet-metal thickness are formed on bent portions of the sheet-metal structure, corrugated continuous grooves having two or more crest portions are formed on a surface of each of the bent portions on a smaller-radius side, and concave/convex sections corresponding to the continuous grooves are formed on side surfaces of each of the ribs which connect a larger-radius side and the smaller-radius side.

High-rigidity sheet-metal structure

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Shimizu, Japan

Shunji Sasaki