Won Jae Yoon

An Experimental Study on the Performance Characteristics of Hot-gas and Liquid Bypass Heat Pump Systems for Capacity Modulation

A small air-conditioner or chiller for a constant temperature bath normally uses a constant speed compressor. The constant speed compressor is relatively inexpensive, but it uses on/off control for capacity modulation. The on/off control has several disadvantages, specifically energy loss and large temperature fluctuation. Continuous operation with a bypass system can be an alternative to on/off control, for capacity modulation. In this study, a heat pump system having a hot-gas bypass and a liquid bypass was adopted. The performance of the bypass-type heat pump was measured, by varying the bypass valve opening. The differences of the COP between the hot-gas bypass and the liquid bypass, in the cooling and heating operations, were within 2% and 1%, respectively. The liquid bypass showed a wider range of capacity control in the cooling operation but the hot-gas bypass showed a wider range of capacity control in the heating operation.

Study on Performance Characteristics of Spiral Fin-Tube Evaporator Applied to Domestic Refrigerator-Freezers

The objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of replacing a conventional plate fin-tube evaporator with a spiral fin-tube evaporator by comparing the performance of domestic refrigerator-freezers adopting either the plate fin-tube evaporator or spiral fin-tube evaporator. Experiments were conducted for the domestic refrigerator-freezers using either a 2-column and 15-row plate fin-tube evaporator or three spiral fin-tube evaporators with 11, 13, and 15 tube rows (N). The optimum refrigerant charge decreased with a decrease in the number of tube rows. The power consumptions of the domestic refrigerator-freezers using the spiral fin-tube evaporators with N = 11 and 13 were 2.8% and 1.5% lower than those using the plate fin-tube evaporator, respectively. In addition, the cooling capacity of the spiral fin-tube evaporator with N = 13 was 3%-7% higher than that of the plate fin-tube evaporator under the frosting condition. In a cooling speed test, all of the evaporators showed similar performances.