St. Louis, December 4, 2014 — NORDYNE, a subsidiary of Nortek, Inc. (Nasdaq: NTK) recently received a patent for their defrost process on split-system heat pumps with Micro-Channel condensing coils. U.S. patent 8,869,545 makes thorough defrosting possible on heat pumps that use all-aluminum coils.
Traditional tube-in-fin heat pumps have coil headers on the sides and defrost horizontally. But in a Micro-Channel heat pump, the coil is rotated 90 degrees so that the headers are on the top and bottom, not the sides. If the defrost started from the top down, the bottom of the coil would never defrost completely.
The NORDYNE patented process adds a hot gas bypass so that hot gas goes from the top-down as well as the bottom-up, ensuring the entire coil gets defrosted.
Contractors and distributors who would like to see this defrost process in action can watch the YouTube video below.