Flow and heat transfer analysis of a domestic refrigerator with complex wall conditions

Abstract

• A comprehensive numerical model with complex wall conditions for domestic refrigerators is developed and validated with experiments. • The flow and temperature distributions inside the compartments are discussed. • The impacts of the anti-condensation tube, VIPs and SLHX on the wall temperature and heat transfer are investigated. • The difference in heat leakage between with and without complex wall conditions reaches 6.2%. The heat transfer and temperature distributions inside the compartments and walls for a domestic refrigerator are vital to food storage and energy consumption. The refrigerator walls consist of many complex structural parts such as anti-condensation tube, vacuum-insulation panels (VIPs) and suction line heat exchanger (SLHX), which are closely related to the heat transfer. To investigate the influence of the complex walls on the heat transfer, this study presents a comprehensive numerical model for the domestic refrigerator with considering the complex wall conditions and an experiment is conducted to validate the accuracy of the model. The flow and temperature distributions inside the compartments are analyzed. The impacts of the anti-condensation tube, VIPs and SLHX on the wall temperature are investigated with and without complex wall conditions. The heat leakage through the walls of the refrigerator into the compartments from the environment is reported. The results show that the complex walls have a large impact on the heat transfer of the refrigerator. The difference in heat transfer between the two conditions with and without complex wall reaches 6.2%. The generic numerical model shows that the complex wall conditions should be considered when the manufacturers calculate the heat load and optimize the wall thickness to design a refrigerator.