Performance Investigation of a New Compressor Model having Green Refrigerant (R290) in a Vapour Compression Cycle

Abstract

Refrigeration and air conditioning now a day is becoming necessary for providing individual comfort to humans and also to store food so that its freshness stays longer. Refrigeration has many applications including household refrigeration, air conditioning, cryogenics, industrial freezers etc. Talking about refrigeration system two important components of the refrigeration system that is compressor and refrigerant have to be considered as primary subject to study for overall performance of the system. An ecofriendly and safe refrigerant which have zero ODP and zero GWP is required in the refrigeration system. This study is more focused about induction models of Hermetic compressors used in domestic refrigerator. Induction models of compressors used in domestic refrigerators works with a HFC refrigerant that is Tetrafluoroethane (R134a), which have zero ODP but have significant GWP. From previous studies it is found that HC refrigerants are most ecofriendly and suitable working fluid in refrigeration system. They have zero ODP and negligible GWP and also called as “Green refrigerants”. So in this study, propane (R290) which is suitable HCs refrigerant or green refrigerant is used as alternative for R134a in induction model of hermetic compressor and performance of this green refrigerant in secondary fluid calorimeter (experimental setup used for performance analysis of compressors) with new induction model of compressor is compared with primarily used refrigerant R134a. Numerical and Experimental analysis has been done with two respective refrigerants. The key parameters for performance comparison are mass flow rate of refrigerant in system, input power (IP) by compressor, discharge and suction pressure in compressor, cooling power or cooling capacity (CC) and coefficient of performance (COP). It was observed from experimental study that with R290, IP of compressor is almost 27-29% high and CC of system is 40-41% more in compare to R134a. While COP of system with R290 is 8-10% higher than R134a. Apart from this, it can be noticed from numerical and experimental study that R290 works on higher pressure ranges as comparative to R134a. So, in this end of the study it can be concluded that green refrigerant (R290) is suitable in terms of performance in induction models of hermetic compressors which are used in domestic refrigerators.