Optimization of performance of vapor compression refrigeration system (VCRS) by

controlling the motor fan of the evaporator

Hamad Said Hanafi, Zulkifli Amin, and R. Iskandar

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1983, 060002 (2018); doi: 10.1063/1.5046294

View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5046294
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/1983/1
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 Optimization of Performance of Vapor Compression
Refrigeration System (VCRS) by Controlling The Motor
Fan of The Evaporator
Hamad Said Hanafi1,a), Zulkifli Amin1), And Iskandar R1)
1
Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Andalas University, Padang
a)
Corrresponding author: zulkifliamin@ft.unand.ac.id

Abstract. Refrigeration and air conditioning is an active and a rapidly developing technology. Refrigeration is the
process of removing heat from low temperature reservoir to high temperature one. Meanwhile air conditioning is the
process of removing heat from the interior of an occupied space to improve the comfort of occupants. There are many
systems in refrigeration and air conditioning. The most popular and widely used is vapor compression refrigeration
system for daily applications. The working fluids used in the vapor compression refrigeration system are called
refrigerants. One of components refrigeration system is evaporator. The evaporator removes heat of the area to be cool.
The current of the vapor compression refrigeration system has a constant speed of motor fan on the evaporator. The
effects of the constant speed of the motor, system are on the stable. In this project, design of system is combined with
Arduino Atmega 2560. The motor fan of evaporator will be controlled by using Arduino Atmega 2560. The controlling
uses two methods, Conventional (On-Off) and Variable Speed Drive (VSD) based on temperature setting. This affects the
electrical consumption, cooling time, and coefficient of performance (COP) of the system. The result shows that the
variable speed drive (VSD) for the cooling time has 3.9 minutes for temperature setting 22°C and 2 minutes for 24°C,
those values are better than the conventional control. The power consumption of the variable speed drive (VSD) is 1.430
kWh and 1.248 kWh which is better than that of the conventional control.

INTRODUCTION
The In the present time, the need of human for the cooling systems is growing up. Many applications have
already been applicated in various aspects of life, such as household needs, offices, transportation and so on. One of
applied systems for cooling is using a vapor compression cycle system or in other words a vapor compression
refrigeration system.
The vapor compression refrigeration system has several main components such as a compressor, a condenser, an
expansion valve, and an evaporator. The components are assembled in order to function the system. The vapor
compression refrigeration system using working fluid is called refrigerant. Now, the current of the vapor
compression refrigeration system has a weakness, which is the operation of the system is still manual. This affects
the performance of the system. The higher the performance of the system the faster the cooling is produced by the
system [1].
The evaporator is a component that can establish the speed of cooling. The working principle of the evaporator is
that refrigerant will absorb heat from the interior of an occupied space that results in lower temperature. The heat
absorbed by the refrigerant in the evaporator is then used to change the phase of the refrigerant into vapor state
before entering the compressor.
The existing motor fan has a certain rotational speed or constant speed. It could affect the performance of the
system [2].
This project is designing the vapor compression refrigeration system by controlling the evaporator motor fan
using Arduino Atmega 2560. The application of the control system uses two methods. The first method is ON/OFF
system that called conventional method. In this method, the motor will turn OFF if temperature at evaporator is

Disruptive Innovation in Mechanical Engineering for Industry Competitiveness

AIP Conf. Proc. 1983, 060002-1–060002-6; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5046294
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1699-4/$30.00

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reached, and it will turn ON when the temperature is risen. The second method is motor control which is based on
motor rotation speed. The rotation speed of motor is controlled by using potentiometer from the Arduino Atmega
2560. The purpose of the control process is to know the effect of controlling motor fan at the evaporator of the vapor
compression refrigeration system and to obtain the characteristic of the system [3].

LITERATURE REVIEW

Refrigeration and Air Conditioning

Refrigeration is a process of moving heat from one location to another location. The refrigeration needs working
fluids called refrigerant. While the system work, the refrigerant flows through two different phases, liquid and gas
phase. Basically, the refrigeration works based on mechanical work.
Air conditioning is the process of removing heat from a confined space to get the air temperature and humidity
as human needs. The vapor compression refrigeration system is one of the most system used for air conditioning
system. The system works based on the vapor compression cycle. The vapor compression refrigeration system
mainly consists of four stages, a compression, a condensation, an expansion, and an evaporation [4].

Vapor Compression Refrigeration System

The working principle of the system of the vapor compression cycles is starting from process which is the
suction of the refrigerant at low pressure by the compressor derived from evaporator. Then the refrigerant is
compressed in isentropic. phase which results in increasing of the pressure and the temperature of the refrigerant.
This refrigerant is in the state of hot vapor will be forwarded to the condenser. On the condenser, a hot vapor will be
cooled at constant pressure by rejecting heat to cooling medium which is usually surrounding air. This process
converts the hot vapor into high pressure. The liquid of refrigerant is then flowed to a refrigerant control valve
which regulates the flow of liquid into the evaporator. This process will decrease the pressure of refrigerant, so the
phase of liquid changes to the vapor by an expansion valve. During this process, the temperature will decrease.
Finally, the vapor of refrigerant passes through the evaporator absorbing the heat from the environment. Then, the
cycle is iterated from the start [4]. The system is shown in Figure-1.

FIGURE 1. Schematically of Vapor Compression Cycle [3]

Close Loop Control System

A closed loop system is a control system that has feedback where the value of the output must match the given
initial input value. The schematic of the control system can be seen in Figure-2.

FIGURE 2. Schematic close loop system

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 Control system is using microcontroller Arduino Atmega 2560. Arduino Atmega 2560 is combined with
temperature sensors LM35, LCD, relay, potentiometer and servo motor.

Arduino Atmega 2560

The vapor compression refrigeration system will be controlled using a microcontroller, Arduino Atmega
2560. Arduino Atmega 2560 is a microcontroller based on Atmega 2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (which
15 can be used as Output PWM), 16 analog inputs, a 16 Mhz isolator crystals, a USB connection, a power jack, an
ICSP header and a reset button. In general, the shape of Arduino Atmega 2560 Microcontroller can be seen in
Figure-3.

FIGURE 3. Arduino Atmega 2560

METHODS

Conventional control system

The design of the conventional control system can be seen in Figure-4.

FIGURE 4. Conventional Control System

For the function of the transfer in the control section, it is shown in Figure-5.

FIGURE 5. Conventional Transfer Control Function

1. The program has been completed in accordance with the needs of the temperature, and the setting will be
checked. After the checking process is complete, the program is uploaded to the microcontroller.
2. The temperature that has been set will be read by the microcontroller. Microcontroller produces signal in
the form of voltage, that is 5V for the state of ON and 0 V for OFF.
3. The signal is forwarded to the relay. The relay receives signals from a microcontroller that serves to
connect and disconnect the current to the fan evaporator.

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 Variable Speed Drive control system
The design for variable speed drive control system can be seen in Figure-6.

FIGURE 6. VSD Control System

For the function of the transfer in the control section shown in Figure-7.

FIGURE 7. VSD Transfer Control Function

1. The program has been completed in accordance with the needs of the temperature, and the setting will be
checked. After the checking process is complete, the program is uploaded to the microcontroller.
2. The temperature that has been set will be read by the microcontroller, and produce a signal in the form of
pulse PWM (Pulse Wide Modulation).
3. The amount of PWM provided by the microcontroller will control the position of the servo motor.
4. The servo motor is connected to a potentiometer, so it can affect the speed at which the fan spins according
to the read temperature.
5. If the temperature is lower than the setting temperature, the servo motor will rotate to a large angle. The
speed of the fan will increase.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Cooling Time
Cooling time is an important factor in the vapor compression refrigeration system. Cooling time is the time
required to reach the desired temperature. The faster the time takes, the cooling speed will be better.
Figure-8 shows that a comparison of cooling time for temperature 22 °C which is resulted in 5.1 minutes for
conventional method and 3.9 minutes for variable speed drive method.

FIGURE 8. Comparison graph of cooling time in temperature of 22°C

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 The next graph (Figure-9) is a comparison of cooling time for temperature 24 °C which is resulted in 3.6
minutes for conventional method and 2 minutes for VSD method.

FIGURE 9. Comparison graph of cooling time in temperature of 24°C

Electrical Consumption
Electricity is an economic factor that has to be considered during the experiment. The greater electrical power
consumption means economic value will decrease. The results of conventional method and the variable speed drive
method obtained are shown in diagram in Figure-10.

FIGURE 10. Comparison of power consumption in temperature 22°C

FIGURE 11. Comparison of power consumption in temperature 24°C

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 Figure-10 shows that the consumption of electrical power with variable speed drive control method is more
efficient than that of conventional control. At the temperature of 22 °C, the consumption of electrical power is 1.430
kWh for the variable speed drive method and it is 1.688 kWh for the conventional method. Meanwhile, at the
temperature 24°C, the consumption of electrical power is 1.248 kWh for the variable speed drive method and it is
1.375kWh for the conventional method as shown in Figure-11. This condition is caused by the fact that the fan
motor will stop when it reaches the setting temperature in the conventional method. When the temperature increase,
the fan motor will initiate the initial / flashing cycle. This causes a surge in power usage. In the variable speed drive
method, the motor will control the speed based on the setting temperature. When the temperature increase, the motor
will increase the speed. The change of speed is based on the change of servo motor angle. In this way, the use of
electrical power is much more efficient.

Coefficient Of Performance (COP)

Comparison of whole COP values between Conventional Control with VSD can be seen in Figure-12. Figure-12
shows average COP value of conventional method is higher than VSD control method is (3.6 and 2,9 respectively).
This is caused by the air mass flow rate in conventional method is higher. The air mass flow rate is lower, heat
absorption in evaporator is better. Moreover, the pressure on P1 and P4 decreases, while the pressure on P2 and P3
increases. The air mass flow rate is higher, heat absorption will be lesser. This is why there is difference between
COP value on conventional and VSD control method.

COP

FIGURE 12. COP Conventional and VSD

CONCLUSIONS
There are some conclusions can be obtained. The first is that both the Conventional control system and the VSD
(Variable Speed Drive) control system have been successfully controlled to vapor compresssion refrigeration
system. Secondly, the VSD control saves power consumption more than the conventional one. Thirdly, the cooling
time on the VSD Control is better than that of the conventional one. So, the use of the VSD controls can be applied
to optimize the performance of vapor compression refrigeration system in addition to saving power usage.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Renewable Energy Laboratories and
Mechatronics Laboratories of Andalas University in Padang Indonesia.

REFERENCES
1. CP. Arora, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Second Edition, (Tata McGraw-Hills, New Delhi, India, 2000).
2. Miller Rex, Mark Miller. Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, (The McGraw-Hill Companies, USA, 2006).
3. Cengel, A. Yunus, Michael A Boles, Thermodynamics an Engineering Approach, (Mc Graw – Hill Book
Company, Singapore, 2006).
4. Tomczyk John, Silberstein Eugene, Whitman Bill, Jhonson Bill, Refrigeration And Air Conditioning
Technology Seventh Edition, (Delmar, 5 Maxwell Drive, Clifton Park, New York, USA, 2013).

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