Thermodynamic investigation of a typical commercial refrigeration system

Abstract

In this study, the thermodynamic performance of a typical commercial refrigeration system is investigated and the degradation from design condition is evaluated. A mathematical model is developed to simulate thermal behavior of the refrigeration system and to obtain the coefficient of performance (COP). A number of measuring equipment including thermocouples, pressure transducers, flow meters, and power meters are installed on the refrigeration system to obtain the real-time data for a period of three months. The acquired data is utilized to investigate the thermodynamic behavior of refrigeration system in addition to model validation. A good agreement between the simulation results and the real-time data, with a maximum discrepancy of 9%, is achieved. The results represent a range of 1.1-1.4 for current COP of the refrigeration system under different operating conditions. It is shown that due to degradation, the current COP is lower than design COP by 29%-39% in different duty cycles.