Summary

With the opening of the external market, both the environmental and the energy conservation issues have to be addressed by the refrigerators manufactures. In doing so, several initiatives, ranging from modern control strategies to the reoptimisation of the refrigeration system are being carried out. This reoptimisation is now possible due to new knowledge of the basic components; compressor, evaporator, condenser and capillary tube-suction heat exchanger. The current approach considers all the components, but one at a time. This inhibits, for instance, to assess the effect o f condenser geometry on the energy consumption of the refrigerator. What is needed is a global strategy of action, involving experimental or computational approaches. Testing refrigerators are a costly and time consuming procedure. The alternative seems to be the development o f computational codes like the one presented in this work. This steady-state model was focused on a all refrigerator composed by the following components: hermetic reciprocating compressor, roll-bond evaporator, wire and tube condenser and concentric capillary tube-suction line heat exchanger. The model predictions were compared with pull-down tests, performed at two different temperatures, and a good agreement was shown. A sensitivity analysis of the model to the ambient temperature and geometric data is also presented and discussed.

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