• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.321-327
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• 2015

This study presents an HFC152a refrigerant air conditioner as an alternative to HFC134a, which is currently used in mobile air conditioning systems. Cool-down performance tests of an HFC152a air conditioning system were conducted and compared to a baseline HFC134a air conditioner. The experimental set-up consisted of a belt-driven compressor, a sub-cooled type condenser, an evaporator, and a block-type thermal expansion valve (TXV). A drop-in test was carried out on the mobile air conditioning system under various vehicle running speeds in a climate-controlled wind tunnel (CWT). Additionally, to optimize the HFC152a air conditioning system, the effects of the TXVs on the performance were studied. The results show that compared to the HFC134a air conditioning system, the refrigerant charge quantity was reduced by approximately 20%, the discharge pressure was reduced by about 350~430 kPa, and the air discharge temperature at vehicle running conditions was $0.5{\sim}1.5^{\circ}C$ lower. In addition, good compressor durability was expected due to the lower compression ratio.

• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.100-106
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• 2009

As an effort to prevent environmental problems caused by ozone depletion and global warming, alternative refrigerants are being developed, and one of the candidates is carbon dioxide. To overcome slightly low efficiency of $CO_2$ refrigeration system, air-conditioning cycle using an ejector was suggested. Ejector compensates throttling loss in an expansion device by reducing compression work. In this study, the ejector refrigeration cycle using $CO_2$ as a refrigerant is investigated to understand the effect of the mixing section diameter and refrigerant charge amount on the performance. If mixing section diameter is too large or too small, either cases show low performance. The optimum refrigerant charge amount which gives the best performance is found for standard operating conditions. The air-conditioning cycle was analyzed for several operating conditions.

• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.77-82
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• 2008

For heat pumps used in a cold region, it is very important to obtain appropriate heating capacity. Several studies using a variable speed compressor and an additional heater have been performed to enhance heating capacity at low ambient temperatures. However, for outdoor temperature conditions below $-15^{\circ}C$, it is still difficult to obtain enough heating capacity above the rated value. In recent studies, the application of gas injection technique into a two-stage heat pump yielded noticeable heating performance improvement at low temperature conditions. In this study, the heating performance of a two-stage gas injection heat pump with a rated capacity of 3.5 kW was measured and analyzed by varying refrigerant charge amount and EEV opening at the standard heating condition. The heating performance of the two-stage gas injection heat pump was compared with that of a two-stage non-injection heat pump. The heating capacity and COP of the two-stage gas injection heat pump were improved by 2-10% at the optimal charging condition over those of the two-stage non-injection heat pump.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.31 no.10
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• pp.868-875
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• 2007

In this paper, performance characteristics of a domestic kim-chi refrigerator are predicted by using the theoretical calculation and experimental method. The objective of this study is to find out the best design points of the refrigeration system and to calculate an adiabatic characteristic with variation to outdoor temperatures. The best design points such as refrigerant charge amount and capillary length were experimentally investigated. And the theoretical calculation is conducted as a function of calculation parameters and outdoor temperatures. According to this study results, the best design points of a refrigeration system with 2 rooms are 95 g of a refrigerant charge amount and 3500 / 3500 mm of capillary lengths and the best design points of a refrigeration system with 3 rooms are 100 g of a refrigerant charge amount and 3000/3000/6000mm of capillary lengths. And the power consumptions of both systems are 13.57 and 18.2 kWh/month. The worst part of heat loss is a front side of a domestic kim-chi refrigerator body.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.217-225
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• 1993

Nonflammable mixtures of flammable and nonflammable refrigerants are possible as substitute refrigerants for use in domestic heat pumps and refrigerators. Refrigerant leakage from such a system is of paramount concern since it is possible that the resulting mixture composition remaining in system will reside in the flammable range. This paper presents a simulation of a leakage process of refrigerant mixtures. Idealized cases of isothermal leakage process are considered in this study representing a slow leak. Simulation is performed for selected composition of binary and ternary refrigerant mixture; R-32/134a and R-32/125/134a. Mixture compositions with respect to percentage leak of original charge are presented. In isothermal leakage process, both vapor and liquid compositions of more volatile refrigerant decrease during vapor and liquid leak, but the total composition of this component decreases during vapor leak and increases during liquid leak. Vapor and liquid compositions are determined depending on the vapor-liquid equilibrium relation of the refrigerant mixture. The refrigerant mixture left in the system can go to a nonflammable direction relying on which component in the mixture is flammable.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.1945-1950
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• 2004

In this paper, The performance of Kim-Chi refrigerator with three evaporator and one compressor was investigated in employing 55% propane and 45% isobutane (R290/R600a) refrigerant mixture as an alternative refrigerant of R134a. The drop in test was performed by varying both refrigerant charge amount and capillary tube length in order to find both the performance and reliability of a small multi-refrigeration system. As a result, Both the power consumption and COP is increased by about 15% and 10%, respectively as compared to the baseline R134a system. In addition, the propane/isobutene refrigerant mixture system took advantage of the minimization of modification and redesigning of system components because of similar thermodynamic properties with R134a such as saturation pressure, temperature, normal boiling point(NBP) characteristics

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.268-274
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• 2010

Because both R-134a and R-600a are used as a refrigerant of a household refrigerator in the global market, the home-appliance industry needs an optimized cycle for both refrigerants. The objective of this study is to provide the design guideline on the optimization of a refrigeration system using both refrigerants. For both refrigerants, the performance characteristics of the refrigeration system were tested by varying refrigerant charge amount, capillary tube length, suction diameter and SLHX length. The tested refrigeration system was optimized at the refrigerant charge of 60 g and the capillary tube length of 3600 mm with R-134a, and the refrigerant charge of 34 g and the capillary tube length of 3900 mm with R-600a. The COP increased from 1.63 to 1.68 for R-134a and increased from 1.37 to 1.48 for R-600a, respectively, by applying the suction diameter expansion. In addition, the COP of the R-134a and R-600a system decreased by 2.3~2.4% as the SLHX length decreased by 300 mm.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.427-432
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• 2005

This study developed a program for detecting charged refrigerant amount in system air-conditioner. System air-conditioner is an air-conditioning system with multiple indoor units. Due to the complexity of the system, it is more difficult to detect the refrigerant amount charged in system air-conditioner than in a general single air-conditioner. Experiments were performed for 6 HP outdoor units with 3 indoor units in a psychrometric calorimeter. The experimental amount of charged refrigerant were ranged from 60% to 140% with 10% increasement. Fuzzy algorithm were emploeed for detecting the charged refrigerant amount in a system air-conditioner. The experimental data were used for curve fitting for general ranges for indoor and outdoor temperature conditions. membership function were determined for whole ranges of experimentally measured data and rulebase were defined for each amount of refrigerant charge. Developed program successfully predicted the measured data within 10% resolution range.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.1484-1490
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• 2009

Since the cooling performance of a $CO_2$ cooling cycle is varied significantly with a variation of refrigerant charge amount and outdoor temperature, the reliability of $CO_2$ system is down. In this study, the performance characteristics of three kinds of $CO_2$ systems were measured and analyzed by varying refrigerant charge amount and outdoor temperature so as to study the characteristics of variation with cycle option. The applied system options are the single-stage compression(1C-1E) system, two-stage compression with 1-EEV(2C-1E) system, and two-stage compression with 2-EEV(2C-2E) system. The performances of two-stage compression with 2-EEV system were less sensitive than those of other systems and the system operated safely and steadily for wide charge amount. The performance of the two-stage compression with 1-EEV(2C-1E) system was the most sensitive to the charge amount, and that of the single-stage compression(1C-1E) system varied a lot with outdoor temperature.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.746-756
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• 2001

An experimental study was conducted to investigated the effect of refrigerant flow control on the performance of a variable-speed heat pump operating in both cooling and heating mode. For this purpose, cooling and heating capacity, EER and refrigerant mass flow rate corresponding to an electronic valve as well as a capillary tube were measured as functions of compressor speed, length of capillary tube (or valve opening of the electronic valve), refrigerant charge, and outdoor temperature. From the comparison of experimental results, it was found that the performance variation due to the electronic valve opening became significant as the operating conditions(outdoor temperature and compressor speed) deviated from the standard condition at which heating capacity and EER were rated for the indicated capillary tube.