- Author
- Payne, W. V. | Domanski, P. A.
- Title
- Potential Benefits of Smart Refrigerant Distributors. Final Report.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute, Arlington, VA
- Report
- ARTI-21CR/605-200-50-01, December 2002, 196 p.
- Distribution
- AVAILABLE FROM: National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161. Telephone: 1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000; Fax: 703-605-6900; Rush Service (Telephone Orders Only) 800-553-6847; Website: http://www.ntis.gov
- Keywords
- refrigerants | experiments | uncertainty | validation
- Identifiers
- Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS); evaporator modeling and simulations; capacity undertainty; user's instruction for the EVAP-COND version used in this study
- Abstract
- The main goal of this study was to investigate the benefits possible for finned tube refrigerant evaporators when refrigerant distribution was precisely controlled to produce a desired equal superheat in each circuit. This goal was accomplished by examining three different finned tube evaporators; a wavy fin, wavy-lanced fin, and a wavy-lanced fin evaporator with tube sheets separated. The effects of non-uniform airflow on capacity were also examined while superheat was controlled in each evaporator circuit. In parallel with the experimental effort, a modeling program was implemented and validated with the experimental results and then used to determine the savings in evaporator core volume possible if refrigerant distribution was controlled by a smart distributor. In extreme cases, the savings in core volume could be as much as 40%.