Development of Deflector Structure and Effects on Performance: Refrigerated Display Cabinet Application

Abstract

Air flow is of great importance in terms of energy efficiency and homogeneity of the cooled package temperatures in open type refrigerated display cabinets (RDCs). Deflectors are critical components for air curtains which are provides air directioning to air channel and grill. A new deflector structure was investigated to increase the performance of the air curtain in this study. Current design deflector structure (Design 1) and new design deflector structure (Design 2) were compared for temperatures of air off-air on and energy consumption parameters. Airflow in the new design deflector structure   was tested under Class-3 conditions (25 °C temperature and %60 relative humidity) with ISO 23953-2 2015 standard. According to the results obtained the data compared with the current design deflector structure. The thermal performance has been increased by reducing the temperature of the air off by 1.2 °C on average, the air on temperature by an average of 2.05 °C and the average package temperature by %17.8 with the new deflector design. Cooling performance was increased using new deflector structure with effective airflow between the air off and air on. In addition, thanks to Design 2, the annual energy consumption of RDC has been reduced by 10.17% and accordingly the CO2 emissions released to the environment have been reduced at the same rate.