Application of environmental friendly and eutectic phase change materials for the efficiency enhancement of household freezers

Abstract

In this study, a novel freezer consisting of an internal phase change material compartment is compared with an ordinary one. A eutectic mixture of polyethylene glycol has been used which is among the non-flammable and non-toxic phase change materials. The freezer was tested under the standard conditions in the test room both with and without phase change materials loaded in the system and all the temperatures inside the device were monitored for 24 h by the monitoring software. A design of experiment analysis was used and the main goal of this work was to use an optimum amount and temperature of eutectic phase change material inside the freezer. The application of phase change materials in the freezer compartment, located in each tray leads to a significant reduction of temperature fluctuations up to 40.59% with the optimal values of 2 kg of phase change material and melting temperature of −20 °C. Experimental results show that energy consumption of the freezer with phase change material is considerably lower than the ordinary freezer. The results of the novel freezer indicate energy savings of 8.37% with 1.5 kg of phase change material and melting temperature of −20 °C.