Experimental Study of HFC-32 Split-Type Air Conditioning Systems in Different Indoor Temperatures

Abstract

Energy management has become one of the main issues in world energy scenario, every energy consumed system should be investigated and developed to increase its performance; especially air-conditioning systems which consumes more than half of the total power required by one air-conditioned building. In agreement with “Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone layer”, HCFC-22 was stopped its production and its refrigerating system must take another refrigerant; HFC-32 as the working fluid. This work presented information about two 12,000 Btu/h HFC-32 split-type air-conditioning systems with the hermetically sealed swing compressor (so called Inverter compressor) and the hermetically sealed rotary compressor. Both systems were placed in two identical rooms where 3,500 Watt heaters were also set in the middle of the rooms and operated under the constant heat flux condition in two different indoor temperatures; 20 and 22 Celsius. From experiment results in both indoor temperatures, the system with the hermetically sealed swing compressor escorted better energy consumptions, Coefficient of Performances (COPs) and Energy efficiency ratios (EERs) than those of another system with the hermetically sealed rotary compressor by 29.70% and 31.86% at 20-and 22-Celsius room temperature, respectively. The performances of both HFC-32 systems in different indoor temperatures were variant. The double pipe heat exchangers (DPHXs) were also investigated in this work, the COPs of the system with the swing compressor and DPHX were higher than those of another system with the rotary compressor and DPHX by 65.17% and 75.88% at 20-and 22-Celsius room temperature, respectively. The information in this work was used in making decision on the A/C system selection, as well as, the A/C energy management to reduce total A/C power consumption in macro views.