Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2017
24th ABCM International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Modeling of a variable speed compressor applied to a domestic refrigerator
Submission Author:
Álvaro Gardenghi , SP , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Álvaro Gardenghi, Luben Cabezas Gómez, Jônatas Ferreira Lacerda
Presenter: Álvaro Gardenghi
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2017.COB17-1801
Abstract
Increasing the energetic efficiency of domestic refrigerators will bring direct impact in Brazilian energetic matrix, since this kind of application is responsible for approximately 8% of the electric consumption in Brazil. This issue is intensified due the low thermodynamic efficiency of such products. Improvements can be obtained by advances on compressor efficiency, insulation and heat exchangers heat transfer coefficient or changing common capacity control strategy from compressor on/off cycling to a variable capacity control strategy, which can be obtained with variable speed compressors. However, the improvements mentioned on each component, cannot guarantee this improvement on entire system because of the complexity of their interactions. Usually, to evaluate and analyze the performance of the system, several tests occur at standard points, which are expensive and slow. Therefore, it is very important to have a well validated model of household refrigerators to represent the system and allow engineers to perform reliable analysis faster. In this work, it is shown an experimental method to obtain the thermal conductance and thermal capacity of the components of a domestic refrigerator (compressor, condenser, evaporator, cabinet). A mathematical model of the refrigerator was developed and validated with experimental data. With this model, it was carried out studies to compare the performance of a standard on/off versus a variable speed compressor. In the ideal strategy, it was obtained gains of up to 34% in consumption, using the variable speed compressor.
Keywords
Domestic refrigerator, Energetic efficiency, Variable Speed Compressor
