Design and Development of Performance Rating Apparatus for Cold Room Refrigeration Unit Using Cooling-Load Balance Method

Abstract

Refrigeration systems are composed of many components working together, and their refrigerating capacity depends upon these components constituting the refrigeration system. The design of the refrigeration system does not only consider cooling loads from products but also the operating conditions that change from time to time, especially the ambient temperatures due to global warming and climate change. Therefore, this work aims to develop the apparatus for performance rating of the cold room’s refrigeration unit according to the ASHRAE standard test methods as well as the Eurovent certification programs. The principle of enthalpy change is used to determine the system performance, in general. In this work, the cooling-load balanced method is proposed, which shows a good refrigeration capacity estimation by balancing the cooling load with refrigeration capacity. In addition, the use of an ultrasonic flow meter for refrigerant flow rate measurement is also discussed for additional validation in future works.