Effect of Refrigerant Charge and Inlet Air Temperature on One A/C System

Abstract

This study describes the results on the performance of one vehicle air conditioning system. The coefficient of performance, evaporator cooling capacity, compressor power consumption, total mass flow rate, vapor mass flow rate, liquid mass flow rate and oil in circulation, pressures and temperatures of refrigerant at every component (inlets and outlets) are measured and analyzed with the variation of the outside temperatures at the evaporator and condenser, the speed of the compressor, refrigerant charge and oil charge. The systematical experimental results obtained from this real-size test system depict the relations between the above parameters in a vehicle air conditioning system, which constitute a useful source for vehicle air conditioning systems design and analysis. The vapor quality (two-phase flow) measurements realized in this work provide an extremely important tool for diagnosing the system performances.