A recuperative air conditioning cycle
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
Most residential and mobile air conditioning and refrigeration systems are direct expansion units. This type of system usually uses only about 85% of the evaporator capacity for cooling; the other 15% is used to superheat the refrigerant to protect the compressor from liquid slugging. This practice results in excessive evaporator volume. Full use of the evaporator is important in mobile air conditioning systems where the space available for the evaporator is very limited. In addition, full use of the evaporator provides higher cooling capacity and better dehumidification in residential applications. Current designs do not reflect those advantages. This study reports on a recuperative cycle (RC) air conditioning system that can use 100% of the evaporator effectively. At the same time, the design increases the compressor volumetric efficiency resulting in an increase in refrigerant mass flow rate and a reduction in compressor power consumption. The test results indicated an improvement in system coefficient of performance (COP) of more than 20% over the entire compressor test range. The RC concept can also be used on heat pumps to improve system performance.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-84OR21400
- OSTI ID:
- 10105923
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-931121-32; ON: DE94003472
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Annual winter meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,New Orleans, LA (United States),28 Nov - 3 Dec 1993; Other Information: PBD: [1993]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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