Advanced Method of Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) Systems Designing to Forecast On-Site Operation—Part 1: General Approaches and Criteria

Abstract

All the energetic management and controlling strategies in ambient air conditioning systems (ACS) are aimed to match design load to current needs. This might be achieved by determining a rational value of design thermal load without overestimation that can minimize its deviation from the actual values. The application of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems with speed-regulated compressors (SRC) is considered as the most advanced trend in building air conditioning due to the ability of SRCs to cover changeable heat loads without lowering their efficiency. The level of load regulation by SRC is evaluated as the ratio of the load range, regulated by SCR, to the overall design load range. With this, the range of actual changeable loads is usually supposed to be covered by SRC entirely while keeping the rest, unregulated, and load range unchangeable. However, to confirm this, the rest load range behind the regulated one should be investigated to estimate the efficiency of SRC operation. Therefore, the approach to dividing the overall thermal load range of ambient air conditioning into the ranges of changeable and unchangeable loads to compare with those covered by SRC is used. From this approach, the method of rational designing and shearing a design refrigeration capacity in response to current loading, based on the principle of two-stage ambient air conditioning, has been widened on the VRF systems to estimate the efficiency of SCR application. This was realized by imposing the load ranges regulated by SRC onto the ranges of changeable and unchangeable loads within the overall range of actual loading. The proposed innovative criteria and indicators for rational shearing the load ranges to match current duties and load level evaluation can reveal the reserves for improving the efficiency of SRC compressor operation and the ACS of VRF type as a whole.