Development of high efficiency cycles for domestic refrigerator-freezer application

Abstract

High efficiency 2-stage vapor compression cycles are developed for domestic refrigerator-freezer application. From the parametric analysis of the newly developed cycles, it is recommended that evaporators be connected in series while compressors be connected in parallel to obtain the highest COP (coefficient of performance) in domestic refrigerator-freezer systems. It is found that the most important parameter for performance improvement is the freezing load ratio (R-(Q) over dotF = (Q) over dot(F)/(Q) over dot(total)). It is also found that the degree of subcooling by the heat exchanger (Delta T-sub = T-2 - T-3) gives the most significant effect on (m) over dot(total). However, there are some difficulties in operating the newly developed cycle such as difficult individual operation of the evaporators. Therefore, this study proposes an advanced novel cycle with the evaporators connected in parallel and without the separator, which is named "two-circuit cycle with evaporating subcooler". It is finally concluded that the refrigerants pair of (R/F) = (R152a/R600a) be the best candidate with the highest COP of 3.758 for the two-circuit cycle with evaporating subcooler. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.