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Parametric study of a variable refrigerant flow air conditioner with two evaporators.

Number: 2435

Author(s) : DUTRA T., DE OLIVEIRA R. G., SILVEIRA J. M., SILVA E.

Summary

Variable refrigerant flow air conditioners (VRF) are composed of multiple evaporators connected to a single condensing unit, being able to provide thermal comfort to multiple indoor units simultaneously but using a compact arrangement. VRF air conditioners may operate with constant or variable speed compressors, and electronic expansion valves, which allows fine tune of the cooling capacity in each of the indoor units at high efficient operation. As a result, VRF systems have been increasingly adopted in household and commercial applications as an alternative to conventional split type or ducted air conditioners. Although these systems are in evidence in the literature, experimental researches approaching detailed analyses of the cooling load on the air conditioner performance are scarce. Hence, this manuscript presents a parametric analysis of a VRF air conditioner with two
evaporators (VRF2E). An experimental facility was built for this purpose and a commercial VRF2E was instrumented with temperature, pressure and power sensors. The experiments were conducted according to a twolevel factorial design which had four independent variables: (1) the total thermal load handled by the VRF; (2) the proportion of the total thermal load handled by each evaporator; (3) the set-point temperature for one of the evaporators and; (4) the inlet air temperature for the condenser. The dependent variables were the mean compressor input power, the VRF2E coefficient of performance (COP) and the temperature and the relative humidity of the return air in the indoor units. It was found that the total thermal load change does not imply in a variation of the COP and, an uneven distribution of loads (65%/35%) between the cabinets reduces the COP. Moreover, it was observed that even under the same conditions of thermal load and temperature set-points for both evaporators, different cyclic dynamics take place in the cabinets leading to different mean return air temperatures and relative humidities.

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  • Original title: Parametric study of a variable refrigerant flow air conditioner with two evaporators.
  • Record ID : 30033126
  • Languages: English
  • Subject: Technology
  • Source: 2024 Purdue Conferences. 20th International Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Conference at Purdue.
  • Publication date: 2024/07/17

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