Abstract
The paper presents a literature review regarding defrosting methods for household refrigeration and heat pumps. The literature review covers the period between 2008 and 2020. A number of 61 papers have been studied. The literature review was conducted by dividing the defrost methods into passive and active. Passive methods involve surface coating and off-cycle. The active defrost methods involve reverse cycle, ultrasonic vibration, hot–gas defrost, electric heating and hot fluid. Surface coating and ultrasonic vibration are recent defrost methods proposed in the literature. Also, recently, phase change materials have been used in household refrigerators to improve their efficiency. This is a topic that needs further investigation and is a subject of interest as it can lead to lower energy consumption during defrost cycles. From the present study, the research direction regarding the use of PCMs in defrost cycles can be highlighted.
Highlights
Vapour compression refrigeration systems (VCRs) are the most widely used technical solution in the field of artificial cooling
When frost accumulates on the evaporator surface, it acts as a thermal insulator leading to lower performance of the refrigeration system and in consequence, to higher energy consumption [2, 3]
They concluded that in the case of the thermal energy storage method, the defrosting time shortened from 71.4 % to 80.5% and the energy consumption decreased by 65.1 % to 85.2% in comparison to the normal reverse cycle defrosting process
Summary
Vapour compression refrigeration systems (VCRs) are the most widely used technical solution in the field of artificial cooling. When frost accumulates on the evaporator surface, it acts as a thermal insulator leading to lower performance of the refrigeration system and in consequence, to higher energy consumption [2, 3]. The same observations can be applied in the case of heat pumps In this context, the present work presents a literature review regarding defrosting methods used in VCRs and heat pumps. The literature review was conducted by dividing the defrost methods into passive and active.
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