Thermodynamic investigation of a typical commercial refrigeration system

Abstract

In this study, the thermodynamic performance of a typical commercial refrigeration system is investigated and the degradation from design condition is evaluated. A mathematical model is developed to simulate thermal behavior of the refrigeration system and to obtain the coefficient of performance (COP). A number of measuring equipment including thermocouples, pressure transducers, flow meters, and power meters are installed on the refrigeration system to obtain the real-time data for a period of three months. The acquired data is utilized to investigate the thermodynamic behavior of refrigeration system in addition to model validation. A good agreement between the simulation results and the real-time data, with a maximum discrepancy of 9%, is achieved. The results represent a range of 1.1–1.4 for current COP of the refrigeration system under different operating conditions. It is shown that due to degradation, the current COP is lower than design COP by 29%–39% in different duty cycles.