Abstract
The recent regulations about fluorinated greenhouse gases introduce a rapid phase-down of traditional, environmentally harmful refrigerants. Consequently, new working fluids are continuously appearing on the market, leading to the need of testing them to analyse their performance before making an ultimate choice. In the present paper, a test rig built to carry out experimental studies on different refrigerant in a drop-in application is described and first results for the set-up commissioning are commented. The experimental campaign was carried out in typical water-to-water heat pump operating conditions, varying the cold water temperature at evaporator inlet from 10 °C to 20 °C, with a step of 2.5 °C, and hot water temperature at condenser inlet from 30 °C to 50 °C, with a step of 10 °C and the compressor shaft rotational frequency from 30 Hz to 80 Hz, with a step of 10 Hz. The first findings demonstrate that the experimental results of some key performance parameters, namely heating capacity, COP and compressor volumetric efficiency, agree well with open literature trends, allowing to state that the experimental facility was correctly designed and can be used to deep the analysis on performance assessment of new refrigerants in a drop-in application.
Highlights
The recent EU 517/2014 regulation [1] and the Kigali amendment [2], force the air conditioning and refrigeration industry to find new refrigerants able to cope with more and more severe limits on Global Warning Potential (GWP)
The substitution of the largely used working fluid in refrigeration applications, R404A, was studied both from a theoretical point of view [3] and from an experimental point of view [4] with low GWP refrigerants and, the replacement of refrigerants traditionally used in air conditioning and heat pump applications, namely R410A for small to medium capacity systems and R134a for medium to large capacity systems, with new, low GWP alternatives was analysed by several authors considering both natural [5] and synthetic refrigerants [6, 7, 8]
Tests were organized in 4 groups that were chosen to assess the influence of the water temperature at evaporator inlet, of the water temperature at condenser inlet and of the rotational frequency of compressor shaft on system performance
Summary
The recent EU 517/2014 regulation [1] and the Kigali amendment [2], force the air conditioning and refrigeration industry to find new refrigerants able to cope with more and more severe limits on Global Warning Potential (GWP). The substitution of the largely used working fluid in refrigeration applications, R404A, was studied both from a theoretical point of view [3] and from an experimental point of view [4] with low GWP refrigerants and, the replacement of refrigerants traditionally used in air conditioning and heat pump applications, namely R410A for small to medium capacity systems and R134a for medium to large capacity systems, with new, low GWP alternatives was analysed by several authors considering both natural [5] and synthetic refrigerants [6, 7, 8].
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