Numerical Analysis of a Water-Cooled Condenser at Startup Conditions for Refrigeration Applications Supported with Experiments

Abstract

Refrigeration for commercial purposes is one of the industrial sectors with the largest energy consumption in the global market. Therefore, research and development of more efficient components such as compressors, condensers, and refrigerants continue to render promising results in terms of GWP and operational costs. However, Due to the urgency typically found in industry to develop prototypes, finding scalable solutions can be challenging. Arguably, this is the case for condenser and evaporators that are designed and assembled under the assumption that refrigeration systems operate at steady condition, where in real circumstances such systems operate under transients based on ambient temperatures or unfavorable startup conditions. The aim of this study is to characterize the thermal and fluid dynamics behavior of refrigerant R404a in a water-cooled condenser at startup conditions. The boundary conditions to solve the CFD simulations are taken from experimental values and set as user defined functions in a commercial software. The results displayed the time dependent oscillatory phase-transition details of the refrigerant throughout the domain.