New ways to use water as a refrigerant.

Author(s) : SÜSS J.

Summary

The discussion of the global warming impact of the HVAC&R industry and thus the applied refrigerants and technologies have entered a new phase after legislative bodies, especially the EU has put a phase down scenario for the commonly used HFCs in place. In the first part of the paper the criteria for the evaluation of the global warming impact of our industry are presented and in the following various refrigeration technologies briefly compared. After that, the environmental benign ones are identified and their economic viability is evaluated. In the second part of the paper the focus is on water as a refrigerant. On the one hand, the application of water in chillers is known from absorption systems and was long ago industrialized. On the other hand, the use in systems, where water vapour is compressed from the evaporation pressure to the condensation pressure by means of a compressor has so far not taken place to any appreciable extent. This paper summarizes relevant properties of water as a refrigerant and introduces an approach to enable the technical realization in a commercially viable manner. The basis of the technique is the direct evapouration and condensation of the water combined with a compression by a high speed direct driven centrifugal compressor. The processes seasonal energy efficiency ratio benefits strongly for the excellent heat transfer properties of water and the multiple or single stage as well as free cooling operational modes halving the energy consumption of this chiller compared to state of the art technology.

Details

  • Original title: New ways to use water as a refrigerant.
  • Record ID : 30014203
  • Languages: English
  • Subject: Environment, General information
  • Publication date: 2015
  • Source: Source: Proceedings of the Institute of Refrigeration. Session 2014-2015.

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