Summary

Several phenomena occurring inside refrigerating systems depend on the interaction between the lubrication oil and the refrigerant working fluid. Regarding the refrigeration cycle, good miscibility of oil and refrigerant assure easy return of the circulating oil to the compressor through the reduction of the oil viscosity. Inside the compressor the lubricant is mainly used for leakage sealing, cooling of hot elements and lubrication of sliding parts. In the compressor bearing systems the presence of refrigerant dissolved in the oil greatly influences the performance and reliability of the compressor due to the outgassing resulting from sudden temperature and pressure variations. This causes the formation of a two-phase mixture with density and viscosity strongly affecting the lubricant characteristics. A general understanding of the oil-refrigerant mixture flow is crucial in developing lubrication models to be used in analysis and simulation of the fluid mechanics inside the compressor. In the present work the lubrication oil flow with refrigerant outgassing is explored experimentally. A mixture of oil saturated with refrigerant is forced to flow in two straight horizontal tubes of constant diameter. One tube is used for flow visualization and the other is instrumented for pressure and temperature measurements. At the tubes inlet, liquid state prevails and as flow proceeds the pressure drop reduces the gas solubility in the oil and outgassing occurs. Initially a small amount of bubbles is observed and eventually the bubble population reaches a stage where foaming flow is observed. The flow visualization allowed identification of the two-phase flow regimes experienced by the mixture. Pressure and temperature distributions are measured along the flow and from that mixture quality and void fraction were estimated. The main motivation for this work is to improve the understanding of this complex flow to construct physical and mathematical models for exploring the fluid mechanics within the compressor parts.

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