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intermediate compressor pocket. Thus the mixture sent to the evaporator has more share
of liquid than ordinary system. Vapour injection system, through experiments was
found to give more COP, refrigeration effect, compressor work and less discharge
temperature than ordinary system.
INDEX
1
Introduction
1.1
1.2
1.2.1
Liquid-Injection Cycle
1.2.2
Vapour-Injection Cycle
1.3
Objective
Literature Review
Experimental Setup
11
3.1
11
3.2
17
3.2.1
Temperature Measurements
17
3.2.2
Pressure Measurements
17
3.2.3
17
3.3
Experimental Procedure
17
20
4.1
Observations
20
4.2
Performance Analysis
20
Conclusion
25
Reference
26
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig 1.1
Fig 1.2
Fig 1.3
Fig 1.4
Fig 3.1
Fig 3.2
Fig 3.3
Experimental Setup
Fig 3.4
Experimental Setup
Fig 4.1
Fig 4.3
Fig 4.2
Fig 4.4
Fig 4.5
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1
Table 3.2
Table 4.1
Observations
Table 4.2
Performance Analysis
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Researches have been going on for improving the performance of vapour compression
suction line, where as in vapour injection technique, bled refrigerant from exit of
condenser expands to an intermediate pressure and refrigerant in vapour form fed to
compressor. Internal heat exchanger economization and fl as h tank economization are
some of the significant methods developed in vapour injection technique. These
techniques demand multi staging of compressor. But the improved performance so far
is not good enough to offset the cost of multistage compressors. Scroll compressor with
multiple injection ports replaced multi stage compressor and opened a new area of
economization. Here an attempt is made to improve the performance of vapour
Ideal vapour compression cycle consists of four processes as shown in figure 1.1. They
are isentropic compression in a compressor (1 to 2), isobaric heat rejection in a
condenser (2 to 3), isenthalpic expansion in an expansion device (3 to 4) and isobaric
heat absorption in an evaporator (4 to 1).
In the ideal vapour compression cycle, as shown in figure.1.1, the working fluid
vapour enters the condenser, and rejects heat at constant pressure to the hightemperature reservoir, so that it condenses to state 3 as saturated liquid. The condensed
refrigerant liquid passes the expansion valve, and becomes state 4 as low-pressure and
1
(COP). It represents the ratio of desired effect (cooling or heating) to the total work
input to the system. In fig.1.1, desired effect is represented by process 4-1 and work
input is process 1-2.
Where is
In liquid- injection cycle a small portion of liquid refrigerant from the outlet of
condenser is split and expanded to intermediate pressure (figure. 1.2). This liquid
refrigerant, which has low temperature than that from the evaporator outlet, is injected
to compressor pressure pocket. Injecting refrigerant while it passing through the
compressor wall, absorb heat and converted to vapour form. This reduction in
compressor wall temperature reduces compressing refrigerant temperature. In turn
reduced compression temperature reduces the degree of super heat.
Internal heat exchanger vapour injection cycle and flash tank economized vapour
injection cycle are the two main classification of vapour injection refrigeration cycle.
Fig 1.3 shows the vapour injection cycle with internal heat exchanger (IHXC). Here an
additional heat exchanger is provided at the exit of condenser. A small amount of
refrigerant is bled out at the condenser outlet and is expanded adiabatically. This cold
refrigerant is fed to internal heat exchanger, which subcools the main stream refrigerant
before entering system expansion valve. The bled refrigerant is fed to compressor at
intermediate pressure pocket. Sub cooling provides additional cooling capacity for
evaporator.
of evaporator. If it is able to remove this vapour before entering evaporator and feed
compressor intermediate pressure, significant improvement in system performance can
this flash gas and feeding to corresponding compressor intermediate pressure will
produce pure liquid at the end of expansion. This is the concept of flash tank
economization. Flash tank is used to separate liquid and vapour refrigerant after
In flash tank economized vapour injection system (figure 1.4) liquid refrigerant from
4
condenser expand through two expansion valves. After the first expansion to an
intermediate
vapour refrigerant from the top of the flash chamber is fed to the compressor injection
port at intermediate pressure. Saturated liquid refrigerant from flash chamber expand
through second expansion valve to evaporator pressure and fed to evaporator. Phase
evaporator and intercooling of working fluid in compressor due to the mixing of two
streams of working fluid, one coming from flash chamber and other from evaporator,
at intermediate stage of compressor.
addition to these advantages, vapour injection method increases system capacity due to
increased refrigerant enthalpy difference across the evaporator. In all these methods
1.3 OBJECTIVE
Objective of this work is to compare performance of a common residential air condition
system with a modified vapour injection system with flash chamber economization
with R22 as refrigerant. It involves the following tasks:
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
The liquid injection to the reciprocating compressor has been recorded since 1946
(Holtzapple, 1989). The vapour injection technique has been marketed for room air
conditioners since 1979 (Umezu et al., 1984 and Winandy et al., 2002 ).
Dutta et al.(2001) conducted theoretical and experimental studies on the effect of liquid
refrigerant injection to the performance of a scroll compressor. Keeping cooling oil
temperature constant, increasing injection ratio reduces discharge refrigerant
temperature, but increases the compressor power consumption. He also did the study
without controlling the oil temperature, where the compressor efficiency improved
slightly due to decrease of cylinder wall temperature.
Cho et al. (2003) also did performance study on scroll compressor by varying
parameters like speed, injection pressure, and injection angle. Liquid injection at higher
frequency showed better performance of compressor and also injection at an angle of
1800 showed better result than injection at 900.
Yuan et al. (2008) compared the heating performance of a conventional heat pump
equipped with sub-cooler and heat pump with a flash tank. Though heating capacity of
flash tank system reduces at low evaporator temperature, the reduction is at slower rate
than conventional system and has comparatively better efficiency.
Wang et al. (2012) did numerical as well as experimental study to reduce inner
compression loss when the air conditioning works under part load condition. A bypass
capacity and 42% increment in efficiency obtained when it worked in part load
condition. Numerical result validated with experimental result.
al.,2010). He did theoretical study to predict the upper limit for the number of injection
port that can be provided to increase the vapour injection. He modeled infinite number
of injection port with equal pressure ratios on R-410A, R-134a and R-404A refrigerant
injection ports. First, second and third injection ports increase the relative COP around
21%, 8% and 4% respectively. But this increase in COP decreases with the increase of
evaporator temp or decrease of condenser temperature. Similar effect obtained for R134a system also. Since R-404A system works at much lower evaporator temperature,
VI technique got more significance and obtained improvement in relative COP about
51% when works at temperature range of -30oC and 40oC.
Chul Woo et al. (2011) experimentally evaluated the performance of an inverter driven
heat pump system with vapour injection into compressor mode as well as vapour
injection into accumulator mode. The vapourized refrigerant supplied at the top portion
of accumulator from which refrigerant fed to compressor. Test has been carried out at
different compressor frequencies and varying injection ratios. Though the heating
capacity of AVI system is less compared to the CVI system required work input is low.
Further it got highest COP at a compressor frequency of 60Hz.
evaporator pressure and mass flow rate but increase COP significantly. As optimization
maximum cooling capacity obtained when evaporator refrigerant inlet temperature is
condenser and optimal injection pressure (OIPcc). Maximum heating capacity obtained
when injection pressure less than OIPcc. Maximum cooling/ heating COP obtained
8
when injection pressure less than or equal to OIPcc. Injecting gas temperature is very
low than the condenser exit temperature. So he proposed a hybrid economizer which
includes both flash tank economization and IHX. He suggests the short and insulated
Cho (2012) theoretically studied optimum injection hole diameter and optimum
injection angle for symmetric and asymmetric scroll compressor model. He observed
optimum injection angle at 3000 and 2600 for symmetric and asymmetric scroll
compressor. In both cases COP increases with increase in injection angle. The injection
period asymmetric scroll compressor is 2000 and 3400 in symmetric scroll compressor.
Injecting liquid refrigerants having an intermediate pressure to the sealed compression
chamber was effective to reduce the compressor discharge temperature. However,
chamber could improve the capacity and the COP of the systems (Ozaki et al.,
1990[11]). The compression work under the refrigerant injection to the sealed
compression chamber was observed to increase since an additional charge was added
to the closed compression chamber. Literature review shows that the vapour injection
is an effective method to improve the system performance.
Torella et al. [5] studied IHX economization experimentally using R-404A. The results
show an improvement in coefficient of performance (COP) of approximately 20% over
the baseline cycle. Cho et al. [6] performed similar testing on a transcritical carbon
dioxide cycle. The results show an increase of 16.5% in the COP and a 5oC - 7oC
decrease in the compressor discharge temperature compared to the base cycle.
Experimental study of Xing Xu 2011, proposed a control strategy for R410A flash tank
refrigeration cycle. It was found that the injected vapour superheat can be effectively
used as the control signal of the upper-stage expansion valve (electronic expansion
vale). The EEV utilized the injected vapour superheat to control its opening. The effect
of different settings of superheat and heater power input on the system performance has
For heating mode, 60 W heater power input is preferred to 90 W; for cooling mode,
30W heater power input is preferred to 60W and 90 W.
The system included a supplementary heat exchanger serving as a sub cooler to sub
cool the main stream refrigerant. The heating performance of vapour injection system
was studied and compared with the conventional system. He found that heating capacity
and COP of the system could improve by 8.6% and 6% respectively.
In the studies of He et al.(2006) did experimental studies on a R22 vapour injection heat
pump. The result showed that heating capacity and COP of the system improved by
34% and 6% respectively. Yamazaki et al. (2002) established a compression model
assuming injected liquids evaporates instantly after injection. The model was able to
predict compressor power consumption within 3% accuracy.
10
CHAPTER 3
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
An R22, 5 Ton domestic air conditioning system has been built to investigate the
The schematic of the experimental setup for flash tank cycle (FTC) is illustrated in Fig.
3.1. The air conditioning system consists of indoor unit, outdoor unit and electric
controllers. Indoor unit consist of an evaporator, thermostatic expansion valve (TXV)
and a blower. Outdoor unit consist of condenser unit and compressor. Both the units
are connected each other by copper tubes.
The air conditioner initially fitted out with a conventional scroll compressor. The given
conventional air conditioning system is converted into vapour injection system by
modifying the scroll compressor. The compressor is modified by machining vapour
injection supplementary hole to the intermediate pressure pocket at 6800 from the
suction end.
Selected vapour injection point on the compressor are welded to a copper pipe and other
end of this pipe is connected to the flash chamber. This line serves as the vapour
injection line. A flow control valve is provided in the injection line. Two pressure
gauges one for measuring compressor pocket pressure and other for measuring
refrigerant vapour pressure in the flash tank are also connected in the vapour injection
line.
The system can switch from base line to vapour injection mode by operating flow
control valve provided in the setup. Four two way valves are provided for the purpose.
After operating the valve, the base line is isolated from the system and refrigerant flow
through flash tank line.
In the vapour injection system an additional expansion device (capillary tube) and a
flash chamber is installed in the system. A set of three capillary tubes (0.09 , 0.07 ,
) provide three different expansions resulting in different intermediate pressures.
Flash tank is connected at the exit of the capillary tube and has a capacity of two litres.
Three pipes are connected to the flash tank- refrigerant inlet, refrigerant outlet and
vapour injection line.
Blower in the evaporator side pushes air through evaporator coil. Cold refrigerant in
the evaporator absorb heat from air for phase change. As a result air gets cooled and
this cold air supplied to conditioned room. Similarly outside air passes over the
condenser coils and condenser loose heat to the air. Copper tube heat exchangers with
aluminium fins are used as evaporator and condenser.
12
13
14
A thermostatic expansion valve is used as expansion valve in base line and second
expansion valve in vapour injection system. Details of each component are given in the
table 3.1
15
Sl No.
Part
Specification
Compressor
Scroll type
Make- Copland
Volume-30.65 cc per rev.
Capacity 5 Tons
Injection hole
Condenser
3mm dia
Evaporator
Expansion Device
62.64m
Flash tank
16
Pressure and temperature are measured at different locations in the experimental setup
Thermometers are used to measure temperature at desired location in the setup as shown
in the fig 3.2. Thermocouples are connected to data acquisition system and temperature
readings are obtained. Further details are given in table 3.2.
Bourden tube type pressure gauges are connected as illustrated in fig. 3.2. The details
of pressure gauge are given in table 3.2
R22 liquid glasstube rotameter is used to measure flow rate. Detailed specifications are
given in the table 3.2.
17
Sl No.
Parameter
Specification
Temperature
Thermometer
Pressure
Rotameter
Refrigerent:R22
Temperature: 55C
18
condenser and evaporator and power consumption of compressor with and without
vapour injection (base line mode). Enthalpy at desired points in the experimental setup
is calculated by measuring pressure and temperature at the locations. From the pressure
and temperature data, enthalpy can be directly measured from pressure enthalpy chart
Layout of experimental facility is shown in figs. 3.2-3.4. Base line test and modified
cycle tests were conducted on a single experimental setup. For base line test flash tank,
injection line and capillary tubes are isolated from the system by operating proper
valves provided in it. When base line experiments run, temperature and pressure are
measured for calculating enthalpy at locations shown in line diagram.
different capillary tubes, opening one at a time. Vapour injection pressure is varied
using valve provided in the vapour injection line.
19
CHAPTER 4
4.1 Observations
The pressure and temperature at the inlet and exit of each component are measured for
baseline and different injection pressures. Also mass flow rates are measured.
Observations are tabulated below
Sl. No.
Suction Discharge
P
psi
psi
psi
Flash
tank
Inlet
Condenser Evaporator
Outlet
Inlet
T
psi
psi
Injection
P
psi
Volume
flow rate
V1
V2
LPM
LPM
1) base
line
45
245
47
220
43
47
-13
CT
33
11
235
45
206
38
35
-20
125 20
122
20
2.5
CT
30
12
245
43
208
39
31
-23
120 17
115
19
2.3
1.9
CT
25
10
238
45
202
36
28
-23
102 12
100
18
2.2
1.9
CT-Capillary Tube
Refrigeration effect, compressor work, COP and discharge temperature are calculated
for the baseline and different injection pressures. Results are tabulated below.
Sl. No.
1.Base line
2.Pi =100psi
3.Pi =115psi
4.Pi =122psi
Refrigeration
Effect
KW
173
Compressor
Work
KW
Discharge
temp
C
48
3.6
47
54.4
3.71
43.5
210
51.6
201
52.8
202
COP
3.8
45
44
Where
12-
21
refrigerant mixture entering the evaporator. Hence more liquid is available to absorb
heat from the refrigerated space.
Compressor work increases with injection pressure mainly due to the increased mass
flow rate that the compressor has to deal with due to the refrigerant injection. The
discharge temperature is found to be less than vapour compression system. This is due
to the addition of low temperature gas (after intermediate expansion) during
compression. From fig. 4.5 it has to be deduced that at higher injection pressure, the
discharge temperature is less than that at lower injection pressure because the decreased
the increased mass flow rate compensates for the higher temperature at higher injection
pressure.
From the above discussion the increase in COP can also be explained
22
COP
Injection Pressure(psi)
Fig 4.5 Compressor discharge temperature Vs Injection pressure
24
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
From the last chapter, it can be concluded that the vapour injection refrigeration system
critical task is the incorporation of vapour injection hole in compressor without any
leak.
With sensors having more accuracy and resolution, a better analysis of the case is surely
possible. Analysis can be done on multi stage vapour injection and the results be
compared. There is much scope for further analysis
25
REFERENCE
[1] Baolong Wang, W. Shi, X. Li, Numerical analysis on the effects of refrigerant
injection on scroll compressor, Applied Thermal Engineering 29 (2009) 37-46
[2] E. L. Winandy, J. Lebrun, Scroll compressors using gas and liquid injection:
experimental analysis and modelling, International Journal of Refrigeration 25 (2002)
1143-1156
[5] Xudong Wang, Y. Hwang, R. Radermacher, Two stage heat pump system with
26