Study on performance characteristics of spiral fin-tube evaporator applied to domestic refrigerator-freezers

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of replacing a conventional plate fin-tube evaporator with a spiral fin-tube evaporator by comparing the performance of domestic refrigerator-freezers adopting either the plate fin-tube evaporator or spiral fin-tube evaporator. Experiments were conducted for the domestic refrigerator-freezers using either a 2-column and 15-row plate fin-tube evaporator or three spiral fin-tube evaporators with 11, 13, and 15 tube rows (N). The optimum refrigerant charge decreased with a decrease in the number of tube rows. The power consumptions of the domestic refrigerator-freezers using the spiral fin-tube evaporators with N = 11 and 13 were 2.8% and 1.5% lower than those using the plate fin-tube evaporator, respectively. In addition, the cooling capacity of the spiral fin-tube evaporator with N = 13 was 3%-7% higher than that of the plate fin-tube evaporator under the frosting condition. In a cooling speed test, all of the evaporators showed similar performances. © 2013 The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers.