- Author
- Domanski, P. A. | Yashar, D. A. | Kim, M.
- Title
- Performance of a Finned-Tube Evaporator Optimized for Different Refrigerants and Its Effect on System Efficiency.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Journal
- International Journal of Refrigeration, Vol. 28, No. 6, 820-827, September 2005
- Keywords
- evaporators | refirgerants | air conditioning | evaluation | climate | emissions | simulation | propane
- Identifiers
- refrigerating system; finned tube; coefficient of performance (COP); input data to CYCLE_D; performance for the theoretical cycle and the cycle accounting for evaporator effects; summary of simulation results for ISHED 1-optimized designs; impact of evaporator performance on system COP; evaporator performance with selected refirgerants
- Abstract
- This paper presents a comparable evaluation of R600a (isobutane), R290 (propane), R134a, R22, R410A, and R32 in an optimized finned-tube evaporator, and analyzes the impact of evaporator effects on the system coefficient of performance (COP). The study relied on a detailed evaporator model derived from NIST's EVAP-COND simulation package and used the ISHED1 scheme employing a non-Darwinian learnable evolution model for circuitry optimization. In the process, 4500 circuitry designs were generated and evaluated for each refrigerant. The obtained evaporator optimization results were incorporated in a conventional analysis of the vapor compression cycle. For a theoretical cycle analysis without accounting for evaporator effects, the COP spread for the studied refrigerants was as high as 11.7%. For cycle simulations including evaporator effects, the COP of R290 was better than that of R22 by up to 3.5%, while the remaining refrigerants performed approximately within a 2% COP band of the R22 baseline for the two condensing temperatures considered.