One of the advantages of the best portable air conditioners over others is that apart from cooling the room they also dehumidify the enclosed space.
The hot air that is generated during the cooling process vents out through the hose and gets mixed with the surroundings. It does not require any special arrangements to handle the venting air.
Now, in the process of dehumidification, the unit sucks in the hot and humid air from the room and removes its moisture. However, the moisture in the form of water removed from the air cannot be left unhandled. Therefore, you need to make some special arrangements to manage this water.
The portable air conditioners deploy various ways to manage it.
Drain-hose system
This is the simplest system to manage the moisture removed during the dehumidification process. The air conditioner is supplied with a drain hose.
- Attach the drain hose to the unit at the required position.
- You can either keep a bucket at the other end of the hose to collect the drain water or simply allow it to drain on the floor.
- Some models also have a pump as an accessory. They connect the pump output to the drain hose and pump out the water to another location through the drain hose.
The drain hose system, however, can be quite messy at times.
Collection in water-tank
The more advanced models would use a tank to collect the moisture. Now, because the tank would have a limited capacity of holding the water, you would need to empty the tank frequently. The time interval would depend on the running time and the humidity level of the room.
To empty the tank, you need to switch off the unit and remove the tank from the air conditioner. You can then empty the tank and put it back at its location.
Self-evaporation system
The most advanced portable air conditioners use the evaporation method to handle the moisture during the humidification process. There are two broad ways to do this.
- One way is to spray the moisture in the form of mist through the hot air vent hose.
- The other method is to recycle the condensing moisture. This method also utilizes the moisture in the cooling cycle thus helps in saving the energy in the process. This system is called the fully self evaporating system.
Final Words
So, these were the different systems deployed to handle the moisture from a portable air conditioner. We hope the information provided in the article was useful to you.
