HEAT PUMP AND REFRIGERATORS

DONE BY: RAHMAYASSER SHAMSELDIN

Heat pumps, air conditioners, and refrigerators utilize heat transfer from cold
to hot. Heat transfer occurs from a cold reservoir Qc and into a hot one. This
requires work input W, which is also converted to heat transfer. Thus, the
heat transfer to the hot reservoir is Qh = Qc + W. (Note that Qh, Qc,
and W are positive, with their directions indicated on schematics rather than
by sign.) A heat pump’s mission is for heat transfer Qh to occur into a
warm environment, such as a home in the winter. The mission of air
conditioners and refrigerators is for heat transfer Qc to occur from a cool
environment, such as chilling a room or keeping food at lower
temperatures than the environment. (that’s why fridge from outside is hot)
(Actually, a heat pump can be used both to heat and cool a space. It is
essentially an air conditioner and a heating unit all in one. In this section we
will concentrate on its heating mode.)

Heat Pumps

The great advantage of using a heat pump to keep your home warm, rather
than just burning fuel, is that a heat pump supplies Qh = Qc + W. Heat
transfer is from the outside air, even at a temperature below freezing, to the
indoor space. You only pay for W, and you get an additional heat transfer
of Qc from the outside at no cost; in many cases, at least twice as much energy
is transferred to the heated space as is used to run the heat pump. When you
burn fuel to keep warm, you pay for all of it. The disadvantage is that the
work input (required by the second law of thermodynamics) is sometimes
more expensive than simply burning fuel, especially if the work is done by
electrical energy.

Air Conditioners and Refrigerators

Air conditioners and refrigerators are designed to cool something down in a

warm environment. As with heat pumps, work input is required for heat
transfer from cold to hot, and this is expensive. The quality of air
conditioners and refrigerators is judged by how much heat
transfer Qc occurs from a cold environment compared with how much
work input W is required. What is considered the benefit in a heat pump is
considered waste heat in a refrigerator. We thus define the coefficient of
performance (COPref) of an air conditioner or refrigerator to be
COPref=Qc/W.=Qc/Qh-Q c

COPhp=Qh/W= Qh/Qh-Q c

Noting again that Qh = Qc + W, we can see that an air conditioner will have a
lower coefficient of performance than a heat pump, because Qh is greater
than Qc.

Note: COP can have a value greater than 1

Thermodynamic cycles
According to the second law of thermodynamics heat cannot spontaneously flow
from a colder location to a hotter area; work is required to achieve this.
An air conditioner requires work to cool a living space, moving heat from the
cooler interior (the heat source) to the warmer outdoors (the heat sink).
Similarly, a refrigerator moves heat from inside the cold icebox (the heat
source) to the warmer room-temperature air of the kitchen (the heat sink). The
operating principle of the refrigeration cycle was described mathematically by Sadi
Carnot in 1824 as a heat engine. A heat pump can be thought of as a heat
engine which is operating in reverse.
Heat pump and refrigeration cycles can be classified as vapor
compression, vapor absorption, gas cycle, or Stirling cycle types .

Vapor-compression cycle
The vapor-compression cycle is used
in most household refrigerators as
well as in many large commercial
and industrial refrigeration systems.
Figure 1 provides a schematic
diagram of the components of a
typical vapor-compression
refrigeration system.

Figure 1: Vapor-compression refrigeration

For comparison, a simple stylized
diagram of a heat pump's vapor-
compression refrigeration cycle:
The thermodynamics of the cycle can
be analysed on a diagram as shown
in Figure 2. In this cycle, a
circulating working fluid commonly
called refrigerant such as Freon enters
the compressor as a vapor. The vapor
is compressed at
constant entropy and exits the
compressor superheated. The
superheated vapor travels through
the condenser which first cools and
removes the superheat and then
condenses the vapor into a liquid by
Figure 2:Temperature–Entropy diagram of the vapor-compression cycle
removing additional heat at constant
pressure and temperature. The
liquid refrigerant goes through the expansion valve (also called a throttle valve)
where its pressure abruptly decreases, causing flash evaporation and auto-
refrigeration of, typically, less than half of the liquid.
That results in a mixture of liquid and vapor at a lower temperature and
pressure. The cold liquid-vapor mixture then travels through the evaporator
coil or tubes and is completely vaporized by cooling the warm air (from the
space being refrigerated) being blown by a fan across the evaporator coil or
tubes. The resulting refrigerant vapor returns to the compressor inlet to
complete the thermodynamic cycle.
The above discussion is based on the ideal vapor-compression refrigeration
cycle, and does not take into account real-world effects like frictional pressure
drop in the system, slight thermodynamic irreversibility during the compression of
the refrigerant vapor, or non-ideal gas behavior (if any)
REFRIGIRATOR AND HEAT PUMP P/V AND T/S DIAGRAM
ANALYSIS.