Development of a thermostatic chamber for the performance testing of commercial refrigeration systems with traditional and low global warming potential fluids

Abstract: Purpose This paper describes the design and implementation of a thermostatic chamber for the performance analysis of commercial refrigeration systems. The thermostatic chamber is equipped with several sensors to monitor the temperature and humidity inside and outside the chamber, as well as the thermodynamic conditions of the working fluid, i.e. temperature and pressure, in the circuit critical points. The acquisition of sensor data and the performance evaluation are performed with the help of a real-time and automatic interface developed in the Labview© integrated development environment (IDE). The thermostatic chamber is adopted to compare the performance of refrigerants R407f and R410a as environmentally-friendly alternatives to the R404a, the currently working fluid in two considered commercial refrigeration systems. The purpose of this experimental campaign is to verify whether the R407f and R410a refrigerants show thermodynamic performances comparable to those of R404a. Design/methodology/approach The paper focuses on the description of the developed thermostatic chamber and the system setup for the experimental campaign of two commercial vapor compression refrigeration systems. The chamber is composed of a 180x180x220cm stainless steel climatic room with an internal volume of 5.12m3, properly insulated by 100mm of expanded polyurethane. This thermostatic chamber allows the integration of the commercial vapor compression refrigeration systems, the refrigerant charging equipment and all the necessary sensors to monitor the environment conditions and evaluate the system performance. Moreover, an automatic control and the data acquisition systems facilitate the testing in several technical configurations. Originality/value Global warming concerns have increased the efforts of the scientific community to identify alternative refrigerants in air conditioning systems with lower environmental impact. Many results in the literature throw light on the technical and economic feasibility of these alternative refrigerants. However, the introduction of these refrigerant alternatives in industrial products encounters some difficulties and, nowadays, several commercial refrigeration systems still adopt working fluids with a significant global warming potential. In this context, the paper presents the development and setup of a thermostatic chamber which may integrate real refrigeration systems in order to determine their thermodynamic performance. The experimental campaign, applied to two commercial refrigeration systems, compares the performance of environmentally-friendly refrigerants alternatives, i.e. R407f and R410a, to the currently adopted working fluid , i.e. R404a. The results may lead to the launch of a commercial derivative of this refrigeration systems adopting a working fluid with a lower environmental impact.