TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of the condenser subcooling on the performance of vapor compression systems
AU - Pottker, Gustavo
AU - Hrnjak, Pega
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are thankful for the support provided by the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and by the CNPq agency in Brazil.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.
Copyright:
Copyright 2015 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/2
Y1 - 2015/2
N2 - This paper presents a theoretical study about the effect of condenser subcooling on the performance of vapor-compression systems. It is shown that, as condenser subcooling increases, the COP reaches a maximum as a result of a trade-off between increasing refrigerating effect and specific compression work. The thermodynamic properties associated with the relative increase in refrigerating effect, i.e. liquid specific heat and latent heat of vaporization, are dominant to determine the maximum COP improvement with condenser subcooling. Refrigerants with large latent heat of vaporization tend to benefit less from condenser subcooling. For an air conditioning system, results indicate that the R1234yf (+8.4%) would benefit the most from condenser subcooling in comparison to R410A (7.0%), R134a (5.9%) and R717 (2.7%) due to its smaller latent heat of vaporization. On the other hand, the value of COP maximizing subcooling does not seem to be a strong function of thermodynamic properties.
AB - This paper presents a theoretical study about the effect of condenser subcooling on the performance of vapor-compression systems. It is shown that, as condenser subcooling increases, the COP reaches a maximum as a result of a trade-off between increasing refrigerating effect and specific compression work. The thermodynamic properties associated with the relative increase in refrigerating effect, i.e. liquid specific heat and latent heat of vaporization, are dominant to determine the maximum COP improvement with condenser subcooling. Refrigerants with large latent heat of vaporization tend to benefit less from condenser subcooling. For an air conditioning system, results indicate that the R1234yf (+8.4%) would benefit the most from condenser subcooling in comparison to R410A (7.0%), R134a (5.9%) and R717 (2.7%) due to its smaller latent heat of vaporization. On the other hand, the value of COP maximizing subcooling does not seem to be a strong function of thermodynamic properties.
KW - Alternative refrigerants
KW - Coefficient of performance (COP)
KW - Condenser
KW - Refrigerant charge
KW - Subcooling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84921357675&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84921357675&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2014.11.003
DO - 10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2014.11.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84921357675
SN - 0140-7007
VL - 50
SP - 156
EP - 164
JO - International Journal of Refrigeration
JF - International Journal of Refrigeration
ER -