Investigations on the performance Enhancement of vapour compression Refrigeration system using Nano refrigerant

Abstract

Energy is the major source for the several industrial process and everyday life activities of human beings. Non-renewable energy is mostly used in industries like petro-chemical, automobile, construction fields, marine and aero. Further, most of the household items are majorly utilizing the energy from Non-renewable source like fossil fuels. newlineHousehold items like refrigerator are used to preserve vegetables, foods and fruits. In refrigerator, compressor consumes most of the energy for its operation. Hence, by decreasing the compressor input, the energy savings could be performed. This might be achieved by improving the performance of the refrigerator or increasing the refrigeration effect. Hence, in this research, an attempt has been made to enhance the performance of household refrigerator using nano-refrigerant. newlineTo conduct the experiments, small capacity (30 L) household refrigerator was considered. The refrigerant R134a was selected as the base refrigerant and the ceria nanoparticles (CeO2) was chosen as the nano-additives to prepare the nano-refrigerant. Totally, three different types of nano-refrigerants were prepared by varying the volume fractions of CeO2 in R134a refrigerant and named as R0 (R134a), R1 (R134a+0.05 vol% CeO2), R2 (R134a+0.10 vol% CeO2) and R3 (R134a+0.15 vol% CeO2). Experiments were conducted by measuring the temperatures and pressures at different locations of the refrigerator using thermocouples and pressure gauges respectively newline