ShareImpact of failures on the performance of refrigeration systems
An Australian study assesses the impact of failures of different refrigeration systems on their performance. Various air conditioning systems, refrigerated display cabinets and walk-in cold rooms were put to the test.
The Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water has published the results of several studies testing four types of refrigeration systems: refrigerated display cabinets, walk-in cold rooms, split air conditioning systems, and “ducted rooftop packages”.
- For refrigerated display cabinets, a condenser blocked at 40% reduced system performance and increased energy consumption by approximately 16%.
- For walk-in cold rooms, the contaminated refrigerant had the greatest negative impact on system performance, with energy consumption increasing by nearly 70% over the baseline run.
- For non-ducted split systems operating at 70% refrigerant charge, there was a drop in unit capacity of 17% in the cooling cycle and 19% in the heating cycle compared to the cooling cycle. Reference.
- For the ducted roof packages, at 100% refrigerant charge with 51g of non-condensable added), there was a drop in unit capacity of almost 18% in the cooling cycle, and at 70% refrigerant charge, a unit capacity drop of 55% in the heating cycle, compared to the reference run.
The results of the various studies are available here.
See also: https://www.hvacrnews.com.au/news/results-of-major-rac-testing-project-revealed/