TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1

TASK 1 2
Components of a refrigerator 2
Construction and Materials used 3
Scaling 3
Insulation & protection against condensation 4
Refrigerants 5

TASK 2 7
The Cycle 7
Layout and Arrangement of System Components 8
Function of each component 9
Thermostats 10
Heat Transfer in Condenser and Evaporators 11

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Schematic of a refrigerator 2

Figure 2: scaling inside pipes 4

Figure 3: insulation inside a refrigerator 4

Figure 4: T-S diagram of vapour compression cycle 7

Figure 5: Vapour compression cycle 8

Figure 6: Refrigerator thermostat 11

Figure 7: electrical circuitry of thermostat 11

Figure 8: modes of heat transfer in one fin 12

Figure 9: Simulation of heat and fluid flow in fins 12

TASK 1

Components of a refrigerator
A refrigerator has many components put together that work in accordance with a thermostat
regulator and regulate the working of a refrigerant fluid. The main components of a refrigerator
are shown in the diagram below and labeled accordingly.

Figure 1​: Schematic of a refrigerator

1. Evaporator fan: The fan is used to blow air over the evaporator coil. It is a DC fan, and
its primary purpose is to create convection currents in the enclosed space so that heat
transfer coefficient by convection is controlled.
2. Evaporator coils: the tubes through which the refrigerant flows from one end to other is
the evaporator coil. It must be made of highly conducting material since this tube is the
intermediate step between working environment/enclosed space in the refrigerator and
the refrigerant.
3. Temperature control: this is mostly electrical circuitry with a thermostat. It is meant to
control the rate of flow of refrigerant depending on power requirement inside the
enclosed space.
4. Compressor: this is the ‘heart’ of the refrigerator, it compresses the vapour to liquid and
drives in the fluid circuit.
5. Condenser: vapour from the compressor is sent to the condenser for cooling, and
reduction in pressure.
6. Drain pan: The condensate from the condenser is collected in a pan at the bottom of a
refrigerator. This is then allowed to evaporate on its own.
7. Gasket: this is a door that contains insulation for heat loss prevention from the door side
of the refrigerator
Construction and Materials used

Compressor The compressor is a machine in itself with many

individual components. The parts consist of piston
driven cylinders and a motor for supplying power.
Steel is one of the most common materials used
for making the piston cylinder arrangements.

The motor is usually a central core of soft iron and

copper alloy windings.

The compressor has fins for heat dissipation to

prevent excess heating and the cylinder has a
jacket to cover around it. This is made of foam
which is a poor conductor material in order to
prevent leakage of heat.

Evaporator The evaporator is essentially a tube. The purpose

of the evaporator is to enable efficient heat
transfer from the enclosed space to the
refrigerant.

It has a copper tubing since copper is a good

conductor and readily available. Further, for
specialised applications, high quality aluminium
alloys can also be used for this purpose.

Condenser The condenser is similar to the evaporator and

hence is made of similar materials, such as
copper, steel or aluminium.
The fins of the condenser are usually made of
steel in order for better dissipation of heat.
Finally, the casing of the condenser is made of
galvanised iron plates.

Capillary These tubes run around the circuitry of the

tubes refrigerator and hence, are insulated throughout.
They are made of copper alloys and covered with
foam for insulation.

Scaling
Scaling is an ever prevalent phenomena that is bound to happen if water is a part of some part
of a system. The reason is that water is a universal solvent and it almost always contains mixed
salts of various elements like calcium, magnesium. When water is deposited on a surface as
condensate droplets, these elements are also deposited. After some time, the water evaporates
but the dissolved salts remain on the surface. Over time, more of these get dissolved and
eventually a white/green substance appears on the surface of metallic objects. Constant
exposure to atmosphere oxidises these salts and they get permanently deposited on the metal
surface. This is known as scaling.

​Figure 2​: scaling inside pipes

Scaling is detrimental to the performance of a component. Scale is a bad conductor of heat and
hence, it can cut down on performance. Scale is permanent, more or less. It definitely cannot be
removed by hand. It requires acids such as muriatic acid or hydrochloric acid for cleaning
purposes.

Insulation & protection against condensation

Insulation refers to prevention of exchange of heat from one component from inside the
component to the external environment. Heat loss is detrimental to the overall performance
indicators sometimes and hence it must be prevented. Sometimes, non-conducting materials
are used to insulate components, whereas sometimes, dry air itself acts as one. This usually
depends on certain dimensionless numbers such as Biot number and Prandtl number of the
system.

​Figure 3​: insulation inside a refrigerator

Refrigerators are a very important part of insulation systems. They are used to store food items
at low temperatures and hence, they need to be insulated. If not, they will lose heat to the
environment and increase power usage multifold. Thus, an effective insulation strategy is
required in order to prevent power wastage from a refrigerator. Some important properties of an
insulation system for refrigeration purposes is the effective thermal conductivity, the properties
of water vapour as a heat conductor, the coefficient of thermal expansion, and water
condensation absorption properties.
Some most common insulation materials used in refrigerators are cellular grass, foam,
polystyrene, flexible elastomers, phenolic compounds such as polyisocyanurate. Apart from
that, tapes and seams are applied all over to prevent any heat leakage from joints and
multilayer systems.

Refrigerants
Refrigerant is a substance that absorbs heat through expansion and loses it through
condensation. In a general sense, this term is also used to denote secondary cooling medium
as water in a boiler, but that would be an inaccurate comparison. The essential feature of a
refrigerant is that it must take heat from a low temperature source and reject it to a high
temperature reservoir at higher pressure.

The earliest refrigerants were air, ammonia, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
Classification of refrigerants:
1. Primary: those that are directly involved in the refrigeration process and cool by
absorption of latent heat. Ex: N H 3 , S O2 , methyl chloride, C O2 .
a. Halocarbons

R-10 Carbon Tetrachloride

R-11 Trichloro monofluoro methane

R-12 Dichloro difluoro methane

R-30 Methylene chloride

R-100 Ethyl chloride

b. Azeotropes

R-500 Freon

c. Hydrocarbons

R-50 Methane

R-170 Ethane

R-290 Propane

R-600 Butane

d. Inorganic Compounds

R-717 Ammonia

R-718 Water
 R-729 Air

R-744 Carbon Dioxide

R-764 Sulphur Dioxide

e. Unsaturated organic compounds

R-1120 Trichloroethhylene

R-1130 Dichloroethylene

R-1150 Ethylene
TASK 2

The Cycle
The vapour compression cycle is one of the basic refrigeration cycles that has the largest
commercial applicability. This is partly because of its feasibility, and partly because of its
conceptual simplicity. Further, the working principle is not limited to a specific kind of vapour,
rather, it can be extended to various substances, depending on the range of application.

To state in simple words, the working fluid, which is a vapour evaporates and condenses at
different parts of the cycle. It extracts heat from the working environment and evaporates,
followed by condensation where it rejects heat to the outside environment. The diagram of the
vapour compression cycle is shown below:

Figure 4​: T-S diagram of vapour

compression cycle

The components of the vapour compression cycle are:

1. Cooling: this is represented as section 1-2 in the T-S diagram. Hot vapour at high
temperature is brought into a heat exchanger where it exchanges heat with outside air
and cools down(condenses); hence the name. This stage usually brings down the
temperature and in terms of practical state, the vapour comes down from superheated
state to a saturated state.
2. Throttle: the throttle is essentially an isentropic process where a liquid is made to pass
through a small orifice. This reduces the temperature drastically and helps bring the fluid
to below the saturation state.
3. Heater/Evaporator: The cold vapour passes through a pipe that goes through the
working environment and picks up heat. As a result, this process raises the temperature
of the fluid as well as the pressure.
4. Compressor: the hot vapour that comes out of the evaporator has to be compressed to
liquid state, thereby raising its temperature for heat exchanging purposes. This process
is isentropic in nature, similar to the throttling process.
Layout and Arrangement of System Components
The various system components are shown in the figure below. The colour representation
shows the relative magnitude of temperature at various stages of the cycle. There are 4 major
components, and 2 auxiliaries.

Figure 5​: Vapour compression cycle

The component diagram of the vapour compression cycle is shown below. For ease of
understanding, we shall from the evaporator:
1. Heater: also called the evaporator, the heater is represented as 3-4 in the T-S diagram
and represents that section of the refrigerator which is attached to the room, or working
environment. It is called the heater because cold vapour comes in through tubes, picks
up heat from the working environment, gets heated itself and cools the working
environment. As a result of heating, the vapour expands as well.
2. Compressor: the compressor is represented as section 4-1 on the cycle. In the heater,
the vapour picks up heat and expands. As a result, the compressor is used to bring the
vapour down and liquid form and raise its temperature and pressure to such that it can
be cooled effectively in a condenser. This is also where the working fluid is the hottest.
3. Cooler: also called the condenser, the cooler or the condenser is the section 1-2 in the
T-S diagram. Hot liquid under pressure comes at this section from the compressor, and it
is made to pass through thin tubes with large surface area to volume ratio. Cold air from
outside is made to blow over the heat exchanger, resulting in rapid cooling. The wind
picks up heat from the condenser and thus, its temperature and pressure are reduced.
4. Throttle: throttling process is used to suddenly bring down the temperature of the vapour,
by forcing it through a nozzle. It is an isentropic process and now the liquid is ready to go
to the working environment to pick up heat.
Function of each component
Function of various components and auxiliaries are explained as follows:

Compressor:
The function of a compressor is to remove
the vapour from the evaporator, and to raise
its temperature and pressure up to a point
where the vapour can be condensed with
available condensing media

Discharge line (Hot gas line):

The hot gas line delivers the high-pressure,
high-temperature vapour from the discharge
of the compressor to the condenser

Condenser:
essentially, this is nothing more than a heat
exchanger, and can be one of many types,
such as parallel flow/counter flow. The
objective here is to provide a large surface
area, by making it pass through very thin
tubes. This maximises the surface area of
contact, enabling it to lose heat effectively. It
also has a large fin attachment that makes it
more effective by increasing the conduction
through the metal.
 Receiver tank:
this is a storage for the liquid that comes out
of the condenser. Storage is only maintained
so that in the later stages of the cycle, a
constant flow rate of refrigerant is maintained

Throttle:
this is, in principle, a nozzle, where the liquid
is made to flow through and converts to
vapour and also reduces temperature. This is
the coldest part of the cycle

Evaporator:
the evaporator is the part of the cycle that is
connected to the working environment, or the
space that has to be cooled. It works exactly
the opposite of the condenser, i.e., it picks up
heat from the room and vapourizers, thereby
increasing the temperature, pressure as well
as the volume of the working fluid

Liquid line:
analogous to the hot line, the liquid line
carries the cold vapour from the receiver tank
to the throttle

Thermostats
Thermostat in a refrigerator would be analogous to the CPU of a computer. That is to say, the
thermostat controls the working of various components of a refrigerator with respect to each
other, keeping in line with the working conditions, and available temperature requirements.
 ​Figure 6​: Refrigerator thermostat

The thermostat is usually found inside the refrigerator and its function is to control the
refrigeration process by controlling the flow of electricity to the compressor. That way, it
controls the most important part of the cycle, and thus regulates the flow of fluid inside the
circuit. This is so because the compressor controls the flow rate of fluid in the refrigerator.

The construction of a thermostat is a temperature sensor, attached to a capillary tube. This

tube is attached to a diaphragm and the temperature setting specified by the user pushes the
fluid to the desired degree. This capillary tube is attached to the compressor controls, via the
diaphragm.
The wiring diagram of a thermostat is shown in the figure.

Figure 7​: electrical circuitry of thermostat

Heat Transfer in Condenser and Evaporators

Condensers and evaporators are heat exchangers, by working. Albeit, they work in the
opposite ‘sense’ in a refrigerator. One takes heat from the working environment, and heats up
the refrigerant, whereas the other cools the refrigerant and throws it to the outside. Both consist
of tubes of a highly conducting material where the refrigerant flows inside the tubes, and air is
outside. Thus, the primary modes of heat transfer are conduction and convection; though
radiation is present in minute amounts.

​ igure 8​: modes of heat transfer in one fin

F
To talk in terms of quantities of heat transfer, the heat transfer can be balanced using
temperature difference across the inside and outside of a single pipe using conduction and
convection resistances as,

Which can be written as

.
There are many studies done on heat exchangers and since the dawn of numerical simulations
using computers, the field has been enriched even more. The flow field, temperature and
pressure fields can be simulated using the fundamental governing equations of fluid
mechanics. They are used to simulate the performance and determine efficiencies of various
types of heat exchanger geometries. Some examples are shown below. The colour codes
resemble temperature fields, where blue is the lowest temperature and red is the highest.

Figure 9​: Simulation of heat and fluid flow in fins