No, because the heat-pump (compressor) in the back needs to stand upright. Also the back has cooling fins that need air circulation

FYI: After transport you need to wait some time to let the oil in the compressor settle before turning it on. A level ground is also highly recommended.

These can be detached and rotated ...

You'd have to sweat together new copper fittings though and probably deal with draining + recharging the refrigerant lines. Not a trivial project for a novice.

In essence: yes, you can build a chest fridge out of the parts you scavenge from your vertical door fridge.

And if you accidentally just vent the refrigerant lines instead of draining then you can release a year's worth of global warming in about 20 seconds. Best not to try.

> you can release a year's worth of global warming in about 20 seconds

What does this mean? I know you’re not saying that it leaks that much refrigerant over a year normally.

Not op, but I think it means that the cooling system contains a gas that if released (it would normally not be released at all), it would do the same amount of harm to the environment as you would normally do in a year.

(I have no idea if this comparison is accurate, but I do know that coolers commonly contain gasses that you don't want to release)

Releasing the equivalent greenhouse gases through leaking coolant in a few seconds as running the fridge in a year would produce, maybe?

Refrigerants typically have a greenhouse effect that is thousands of times more potent than CO2.

For example, the refrigerant R-410A does about 2000 more greenhouse warming over a 100 year period. So a leak of 1 kg of R-410A is equivalent to about 2 metric tons of CO2 emissions.

Yes this is what I meant.

10 years ago I bought an expensive tumble drier with a heap pump in order to be nice to the environment. After a few years there was an issue with it and I called a repairman. He vented the refrigerant and refilled it as part of his repair.

My calculation said it was an equivalent emission of about 1300kg CO2. Environmental impact immediately went negative.

This will be an issue when everyone is heating their house with heat pumps. They are amazing, but you have to follow the rules when repairing and scrapping them.

I'd honestly be shocked if "vented and refilled refrigerant" was legal, that sounds like something a shady repairman would do...

I looked it up, it wasn't (in Denmark). He said he always does it that way. I printed out and gave him a copy of the relevant regulation. I'm sure it made all the difference...

Unless you're in a region where AC is not needed, you already need refrigerant in the AC system. It does add some refrigerant overall (since there's places that do not require AC, but may require heat pumps), but it's not that big a difference.

Most homes in the EU don't have air con.

Unlike automotive (mobile) air conditioning, the kind of refrigerators you'll find in a kitchen rarely leak as they're designed with no fittings or perishable/permeable hoses to leak. To do any sort of service you open up the sealed system which creates the possibility for deliberate or accidental leaks.

But…

At least in the US kitchen refrigerators have moved to hydrocarbon refrigerants (R600a a.k.a. isobutane) which have a much lower global warming potential of around 3.3x that of CO2. Prior to that it was R134a, and I'm pretty sure R410a was mostly limited to HVAC applications. More to the point a modern refrigerator has on the order of a couple ounces (so maybe 50 grams) of refrigerant not an entire kilo.

Don't fuck around with the sealed system unless you've the proper training. It's not rocket science but there are any number of non-obvious ways for things to go wrong. R600a is (in)flammable, R134a decomposes into hydrogen fluoride when exposed to flame, and R410a is a blend of things so you can't really top it off.

Not a legal project for a novice in many places.

I'm fine with sweating copper. I know nothing of dealing with the refrigerant beyond the fact that you need a license to do so here.

Check the datasheet for the fridge compressor. Some models are designed to run in two orientations. If you're very lucky, the other orientation for your compressor will be 'on its back'.

If you run the compressor in an orientation it isn't designed for, the motor will get 'liquid slugging', which is unrecoverable - you'll need to buy a new fridge.

By the way, if liquid slugging is caught before the motor burns out (some motors have an overload disconnect), then you can normally switch around the start capacitor onto the run wiring and vice versa to run the motor backwards. Running it backwards for a second can release the liquid and 'fix' the fridge.

I don’t think so. Part of it is that chests tend to have more insulation (also the reason why mini-fridges are absolute dreck efficiency wise), and the coolant / radiator circuit won’t be set up properly: in a traditional vertical fridge the coolant circuit is through the back or racks (for freezers) and the radiator are on the back, if you lay it on its back the radiator is now on the bottom, and trying to heat up the insulation, with the coolant circuit also at the bottom.

Qualified 'yes' ... if you build a support to keep the heat exchange grid from being crushed and to vent the flow of air across it to an exhaust exit.

Having the heat pump in the wrong position will reduce it's lifetime. Very likely there is a vat of lubricants at the bottom. If you flip it on the side one side of the pump cylinder will be flooded and possibly leak into the coolant curcuit. The top side will run dry and jam pretty fast.

What siblings said, and also some (mostly older) refrigerators have radiators on the back and depend on air convection to cool them. But the insulated container itself, including the cooling circuit, is OK to lay sideways. Long story short, you can do it, but you need to reconfigure some pipes.

Also, the question is not dumb at all.