Experimental investigation on the scroll refrigeration compressor with external cooling

Abstract

To improve the performance of scroll refrigeration compressor, an external cooling structure scroll compressor was designed and researched. A prototype with cooling structure was developed and tested. The thermodynamic model including the leakage, heat transfer, and friction was set up to simulate the working process of scroll compressor with external cooling. Experimental results show that coefficient of performance value of the prototype is improved by 0.31, the cooling capacity increases by 1281 W (12.9 per cent) and the discharge temperature reduces by 44 °C (41 per cent) maximally when the water cooling is used. Increasing the water flowrate improves the volumetric efficiency and enhances the heat transfer between water and scroll compressor. When the rotational speed of compressor goes up, the volumetric efficiency increases remarkably while the quantity of heat transfer rises slowly. The simulated results have good coincidence with the experimental ones.