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C)
DT
sub
subcooling degree (
C)
v specic volume (m
3
kg
1
)
Greek Letters
r density (kg m
3
)
F capillary constant (6.0)
Subscripts
in inlet to the capillary tube
out outlet of the capillary tube
f entrance in the two-phase domain
s saturation state
i nt e r na t i o na l j o ur na l of r e f r i ge r a t i o n 3 8 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 2 7 5 e2 8 0 276
calculated saturation temperature of the measured pressure
and thus indicated a pure refrigerant.
2.2. Design of experiments
In order to cover the complete scope of conditions of small
scale refrigeration systems with a minimal amount of test
runs, the Two-level Factorial Design method was used for the
planning of the tests (Box et al., 2005). For all available test
parameters a minimum and maximum value were xed: (1)
the inlet pressure p
in
, (2) the subcooling degree at the capillary
inlet DT
sub
, (3) the inner diameter D and (4) the length L of the
capillary tube. The chosen minimum and maximum values
are given in Table 2. These values are combined in a scheme in
a way that all possible combinations are each reproduced with
one run, which results in a total amount of 4
2
16 test runs.
The scheme is shown in Table 3.
Because the individual test runs of this scheme combine
always the edges of the operating range (e.g. the highest
condensation pressure together with the biggest diameter),
very high subcooling degrees were chosen to avoid two phase
ow at the capillary tube entrance.
To broaden the scope of the presented data, also tests with
a lower subcooling at the capillary entrance and additional
three different capillary tubes (tests 17e22 in Table 4) were
performed.
2.3. Choked ow
As can be seen in Section 2.2 the outlet pressure was not
considered as a parameter in the design of experiments, due
to its marginal inuence on the mass ow rate. To illustrate
this fact an extra test was performed where all parameters
were kept constant with the outlet pressure continuously
lowered during 4.5 h from 2.2 bar to 0.6 bar. Fig. 2 shows the
resulting mass ow rate versus the outlet temperature of the
capillary tube.
The very small instabilities of the inlet pressure, which
resulted in a standard deviation over all points in these 4.5 h of
only 15 mbar, were noticeable on the enlarged scale of the
mass ow rate. In order to point out the effect of the inlet
pressure uctuations, all data points for which the deviation
of the inlet pressure to its meanvalue was withinthe standard
deviation are printed as lled circles. The other points are
presented as empty circles.
Fig. 2 clearly illustrates, that the mass ow rate does not
change anymore as the outlet pressure falls below 1.3 bar.
This is the range of Choked Flow.
2.4. Experimental results
In Table 4 the results of all test runs (Design of Experiments
and additional tests) are listed. The values of DT
sub
were
calculated with the equation for the vapor pressure given in
Bu cker and Wagner (2006). In all tests the outlet pressure was
set below the critical pressure for the choked ow occurrence
(see Section 2.3) by adapting the compressor frequency. The
Low Pressure Control Valve was kept fully open in all tests.
3. Comparison with available correlations
Due to the drastic change of the uid properties in the two-
phase ow along the capillary tube, it is not possible to
describe the throttling process with analytical and explicit
equations. In order to obtain a reliable tool for the design of
capillary tubes in spite of these difculties the following ap-
proaches evolved during the last decades:
3.1. Finite-volume based methods
Following the nite-volume based methods the capillary tube
is divided into single cells and the uid properties are aver-
aged over these cells. Thus an accurate description of the
process is obtained. However, the creation of the model and
its implementation demand a high degree of time and effort.
Additionally the discretisation of the process brings up
Table 1 e Uncertainties of the measurements.
Measured parameter Uncertainty
Temperature 0.2
C
Pressure 5 mbar
Mass ow rate 1%
Inner diameter 0.01 mm
Capillary tube length 5 mm
Table 2 e Minimum and maximum values for the Design
of Experiments.
Parameter () () Physical unit
p
in
4.5 6.0 bar (minuscules)
DT
sub
8.0 13.0
C
D 0.69 0.61 mm
L 2.5 3.9 m
Table 3 e Scheme for the two-level factorial design (Box
et al., 2005).
Test p
in
DT
sub
D L
1
2 e
3 e
4 e e
5 e
6 e e
7 e e
8 e e e
9 e
10 e e
11 e e
12 e e e
13 e e
14 e e e
15 e e e
16 e e e e
i nt e r na t i ona l j o ur na l o f r e f r i g e r a t i o n 3 8 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 2 7 5 e2 8 0 277
numerical issues one has to handle (Melo et al., 1992). Exam-
ples of this approach are given in Bansal and Rupasinghe
(1998), Li et al. (1990) or Garc a-Valladares et al. (2002).
Because of the named drawbacks this approach is not
further followed up in this work.
3.2. Empirical correlations
Another approach is represented by empirical correlations,
which focus on the applicability of the method. Most often
empirical correlations are developed with the Buckingham-Pi-
Theorem (dimensional analysis). Thereby all variables which
are considered to have an inuence on the mass ow rate and
are independent from each other are combined in dimen-
sionless groups. These groups are tted by means of an
appropriate equation form (mostly power-law) to measure-
ment data. Another method to develop empirical correlations
came up in the last years applying neural networks to nd an
adequate equation form to t the empirical parameters to
experimental results.
Shao et al. (2013) reviewed 20 empirical correlations for the
prediction of the mass ow rate through adiabatic capillary
tubes and compared the agreement of eleven representative
correlations with 182 experimental data points of different
sources, comprising ve different refrigerants. Only data
which was not used for the development of the investigated
correlation was chosen for the comparison. Thus, due to the
lack of independent experimental data for R600a, the authors
could not check the validity of the correlations for this
refrigerant.
The recommendation of the review from Shao et al.
resulted in the correlation from Yang and Zhang (2009). This
correlation was developed with a neural network approach
and represents an expansion of an earlier work (Zhang and
Zhao, 2007) in order to also cover super critical ow of CO
2
.
The authors used 710 experimental data points with capillary
tube ow, including the results for R600a of Melo et al., to train
the neural network, i.e. to nd an adequate equation form. In
Table 4 e Experimental results.
Test p
in
/bar T
in
/
C T
out
/
C L/m D/mm DT
sub
/
C p
S
T
out
/bar
_
M/(kg h
1
)
Tests from the Design of Experiments e scheme
1 6.02 32.0 19.9 3.93 0.692 12.9 0.73 1.535
2 4.52 21.0 21.3 3.93 0.692 13.0 0.69 1.379
3 6.04 37.0 21.7 3.93 0.692 8.0 0.67 1.340
4 4.49 26.0 21.3 3.93 0.692 7.7 0.69 1.280
5 6.02 32.0 23.2 3.93 0.611 12.9 0.63 1.104
6 4.53 21.0 25.3 3.93 0.611 13.0 0.58 0.846
7 6.02 37.0 24.2 3.93 0.611 7.8 0.61 1.000
8 4.51 26.0 21.5 3.93 0.611 7.9 0.68 0.831
9 6.00 31.9 16.7 2.49 0.692 12.8 0.83 1.920
10 4.50 21.0 19.5 2.49 0.692 12.8 0.74 1.689
11 6.02 37.0 15.4 2.49 0.692 7.8 0.88 1.773
12 4.48 26.0 20.3 2.49 0.692 7.7 0.72 1.400
13 6.01 32.0 20.6 2.53 0.611 12.8 0.71 1.457
14 4.50 21.0 25.9 2.53 0.611 12.8 0.56 1.183
15 6.02 37.0 20.6 2.53 0.611 7.8 0.71 1.265
16 4.50 26.1 24.7 2.53 0.611 7.8 0.59 1.098
Additional tests
17 4.10 27.7 19.5 2.73 0.607 2.8 0.74 0.807
18 5.30 34.1 21.9 2.73 0.607 5.9 0.67 1.079
19 5.30 37.0 19.6 2.79 0.617 2.9 0.74 0.964
20 4.00 23.7 11.2 2.79 0.617 5.8 1.04 0.873
21 4.00 27.0 26.7 4.04 0.610 2.6 0.54 0.645
22 5.29 34.0 25.9 4.04 0.610 5.9 0.56 0.932
-30 -20 -10 0 10
1,20
1,22
1,24
1,26
1,28
1,30
p
in
inside (5.0 +/- ) bar
p
in
outside (5.0 +/- ) bar
M
/
(
k
g
h
-
1
)
T
out
/ C
0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5
p
S
(T
out
) / bar
T
in
= 27C =0.06 K
p
in
= 5.0 bar =0.015 bar
Choked Flow
Fig. 2 e Illustration of choked ow.
i nt e r na t i o na l j o ur na l of r e f r i ge r a t i o n 3 8 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 2 7 5 e2 8 0 278
the paper a prediction of all 710 training data points of 93%
within an error band of 15% is reported.
As Fig. 3 shows the empirical correlation from Yang and
Zhang predicts both the experimental results of Melo et al. as
well as our own points on R600a systematically by about 20%
too high.
3.3. Algebraic equations
Several scientists tried to develop an analytical description of
the capillary tube ow by introducing simplifying
assumptions for the calculation of the uid properties along
the capillary tube. In this way they were able to transform the
governing differential equations into their integral form. They
obtained an algebraic equation which can predict the mass
owrate or alternatively the geometry of the capillary tube for
given boundary conditions. Although empirical parameters
are included in these equations, too, they are based on a
physical background.
One of the rst successful attempts on this eld was the
one by Yilmaz and U
D
5
L
"
p
in
p
f
v
f
p
f
p
out
a
b
a
2
ln
a p
out
b
a p
f
b
!#
v
u
u
t
(1)
The parameters a and b, which represent tting parameters
for the description of the specic volume in the two phase
domain, were adopted fromZhang and Ding (2004) and Yilmaz
and U