Refrigeration Copper Pipe

The competition of refrigeration copper pipe market is fierce, so it is necessary to expand new fields and enhance the competitiveness of products.
Copper prices, which had been running at high levels in 2012, continued to fall in 2013, while the processing prices of refrigerated copper tubes also showed a downward trend. With the implementation of the new energy efficiency standards for frequency conversion air conditioning and the in-depth research and development of higher energy efficiency products by air conditioning enterprises, China’s refrigeration copper tube industry entered a new stage of development in 2013.
In 2013, the refrigeration copper pipe market has three prominent characteristics: one is overcapacity, the other is serious homogenization of products, the third is that the supply of low-end products exceeds the demand, and the supply of high-end products exceeds the demand. For these problems, the strategy adopted by enterprises is nothing more than controlling the cost of raw materials, trying to have a stable and strong capital flow, improving the added value of products, and expanding new application fields, so as to enhance the competitiveness of products. Refrigeration copper tube processing fees continue to fall, prompting many copper tube enterprises to implement the strategy of small profits and more sales, which leads to the extremely fierce competition in the refrigeration copper tube market.

At present, there are more than 100 refrigeration copper pipe manufacturers in China, of which only a dozen enterprises with a capacity of more than 50,000 tons per year are distributed in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and other provinces where air conditioning production enterprises are concentrated.
Refrigeration copper pipe is the most important part of heat transfer in air-conditioning heat exchanger, and it is also an important part of the refrigeration system circuit. Therefore, the heat transfer performance of copper tube itself will directly affect the heat transfer performance of air-conditioning. The new version of energy efficiency standard of frequency conversion air conditioning has been greatly improved, which will stimulate air conditioning enterprises to further improve product energy efficiency, which also puts forward higher requirements for heat transfer efficiency and quality of refrigeration copper tubes.
Efficient air conditioning requires more efficient copper tubes. Therefore, the demand for internal threaded copper tubes with 20%-30% higher thermal conductivity than light tubes is growing. It is noteworthy that, as a high-end product of refrigeration copper tubes, only a few large enterprises can produce inner threaded copper tubes. “In 2012, the annual output of internal threaded copper pipes in China was about 600,000 tons, accounting for less than 50% of the total.

Talking about the future development trend of refrigeration copper tube technology, the wall of refrigeration copper tube will be thinner and thinner, the outer diameter will be smaller and smaller, and the tooth shape will be more and more complex. In other words, the heat transfer efficiency of refrigeration copper tube will be higher and higher.
Small tube calibration is also the future trend of technology. Under the same heat transfer performance, compared with the traditional heat exchanger with 7 mm tube diameter, the cost of the heat exchanger with less than 5 mm tube diameter can be reduced by about 20%. At the same time, the smaller the diameter of copper tube, the less the refrigerant charge, which is beneficial to environmental protection.
Strength and high elongation are also the development direction of refrigeration copper tubes. The higher the wall strength, the thinner the refrigeration copper tube can be processed, which not only has better performance, but also has lower cost. In addition, some air conditioners now use CO2 refrigerant, which has high working pressure and higher requirements for copper tube strength.