Experimental and Simulation Study of the Latest HFC/HFO and Blend of Refrigerants in Vapour Compression Refrigeration System as an Alternative of R134a

Abstract

Experimental and simulation investigation of the performance and characteristics of different refrigerants and blends of refrigerants is carried out to replace the existing refrigerant R134a for a vapour compression refrigeration system. The performance of VCRS systems was improved by several researchers by introducing the concept of mixing the family of refrigerants with low GWP in the working circuit. This research paper presents the performance results of different refrigerants and blends of refrigerants that can replace the R134a it is also an attempt to cover the mechanism and possible combination of different blends of refrigerants to improve the effectiveness as well as efficiency of the refrigeration system. Detailed analysis of different parameters of heat transfer and predictions of low-GWP refrigerants, including the HFO (hydro fluoro-olefin) class and the HC (hydrocarbon) class through energy and exergy analysis of commercial refrigerants such as R134a is performed. Results are obtained by using an experimental test rig and the input parameters of the experiments are kept the same with the simulation software (CYCLE_D-HX 2.0) and validated with the results to replace R134a.