Daikin Industries, Ltd.

Yasutaka Ohtani

Masanori Jindou

Shun Yoshioka

Junichi Hamadate

Yoshio Oritani

Takuya Kazusa

Fumiaki Koike

Yoshimasa Kikuchi

Masato Okuno

Nobuhiro Nojima

Naritaka Yakura

Ayumi Komaki

Asahi Ohno

Takaaki Akagi

A refrigerant pipe unit includes: a first plate; a second plate stacked on the first plate; and a control valve. One or both of the first plate and the second plate include a refrigerant flow path. The control valve includes: a valve body that includes a refrigerant passage communicating with the refrigerant flow path, rotates in the first plate, and changes a flow of a refrigerant in the refrigerant flow path with an amount of rotation of the valve body; and a driver that adjusts the amount of the rotation of the valve body.

Refrigerant pipe unit and refrigeration apparatus

An air conditioning apparatus includes an aluminum heat exchanger, an aluminum gas pipe, an aluminum liquid pipe and a copper gas pipe. The aluminum heat exchanger performs heat exchange between air and a refrigerant, and is disposed upright. The aluminum gas pipe channels gas refrigerant, and extends from a side part of the aluminum heat exchanger. The aluminum liquid pipe channels liquid refrigerant, and extends from an area below the aluminum gas pipe in the side part of the aluminum heat exchanger. The copper gas pipe channels gas refrigerant. The aluminum gas pipe is connected in a connecting part to the copper gas pipe from above the copper gas pipe. The aluminum pipe is disposed in an area outside of directly under the connecting part of the aluminum gas pipe and the copper gas pipe.

Air conditioning apparatus

A lower space of a first header collecting pipe of a heat exchanger is, by partitions, divided into three communication chambers and a single mixing chamber. The mixing chamber communicates with the communication chamber through a through-hole of a lower horizontal partition, communicates with the communication chamber through a through-hole of a vertical partition, and communicates with the communication chamber through a through-hole of an upper horizontal partition. Gas-liquid refrigerant flows into the mixing chamber, and is mixed in the mixing chamber. Then, the refrigerant is distributed to the communication chambers. Thus, the wetness of refrigerant flowing into a flat tube is uniformized among the flat tubes, and performance of the heat exchanger can be fully achieved.

Heat exchanger

A first header collecting pipe of an outdoor heat exchanger has three communication chambers and one mixing chamber. One auxiliary horizontal partition plate is disposed between two main horizontal partition plates. The mixing chamber is defined between the first main horizontal partition plate and the auxiliary horizontal partition plate. A gas-liquid two-phase refrigerant supplied to the outdoor heat exchanger functioning as an evaporator flows into the mixing chamber, and is then distributed to the three communication chambers. This structure allows the refrigerant that is to be distributed from the mixing chamber to the communication chambers to have a uniform wetness.

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Sakai, Japan

Yasutaka Ohtani