Week-2

Refrigeration Cycle

Refrigeration cycles can be categorized

Gas cycle or air cycle
Vapors cycle

Air Cycle

Vapor Cycle

In a typical gas cycle, the working

In a vapor cycle the working fluid

In gas cycles, heat rejection and

refrigeration take place as the gas
undergoes sensible cooling and
heating.

The required mass flow rates for a

given refrigeration capacity will be
much smaller compared to a gas cycle.

fluid (a gas) does not undergo phase

change

Applications:
Passenger air craft, jet aircraft

Missiles

undergoes phase change and

refrigeration effect is due to the
vaporization of refrigerant liquid.

subdivided into vapor compression

systems, vapor absorption systems,

vapor jet systems

Air Refrigerator working on Reversed Carnot Cycle

Carnot Cycle is the ideal cycle with 100% efficiency.

It is the ideal Engine and if we reverse it, it will be the ideal
Refrigeration Cycle.

Carnot heat engine

Carnot refrigeration cycle

T-s Diagram
Atmosphere at TH

QH

QH

Condenser

Turbine

Compressor

Win
1

4
1

Evaporator

QL

QL
Cooling space at TL

1-2 : Isentropic Compression

2-3 : Isothermal Heat rejection
3-4 : Isentropic Expansion
4-1 : Isothermal Heat addition

Carnot cycle consists of reversible processes which make its

efficiency higher than could be achieved in an actual cycle
Why? Discuss the Carnot cycle if it is unattainable idea?
There are two reasons:
I. It serves as a standard of comparison
II. It provides a convenient guide to the temperatures that should
be maintained to achieve maximum effectiveness

Coefficient of Performance (COP)

Unlike Heat engine, we use COP in refrigeration system because
the output in process 2-3 is usually wasted.

Net work= Heat absorbed in evaporator-Heat rejected in condenser

The heat transferred during isothermal processes 2-3 and 4-1 are given by:

Net Work output =Heat rejected- Heat absorbed

Wnet=Q2-3 Q4-1
Wnet=Th(S2 S3) TL(S1-S4)

COPCarnot =
COPCarnot

Heat.absorbed Q41
=
Work .input
Wnet

TL ( S1 S 4 )
TL
=
=
Th ( S 2 S3 ) TL ( S1 S 4 ) Th TL

COPCarnot =

TL
Th TL

COP can be maximized by maximizing TL (target

temperature)
and minimizing Th (ambient temperature)
In summer performance of refrigerator decreases
because Th increases.
In Refrigerator the value of TL is less than for AC,
so COP of AC is higher than COP of Refrigerator.

Temperature Limitation

1.

Higher temperature should be more than the temperature of

cooling air to which heat is to be rejected

2.

Lower temperature should be less than the temperature of

substance to be cooled

What control do we have?

We can concentrate on keeping the T as small as possible.

Reduction of T can be accomplished by increasing A or U in the
equation

In order to decrease T to zero, either U or A would have to be

infinite. Since infinite values of U and A would also require an infinite
cost; the actual selection of equipment always stops short of reducing
T to zero.

Limitations of Carnot cycle:

Difficulty of achieving isothermal heat transfer during processes 2-3
and 4-1. For a gas to have heat transfer isothermally, it is essential to
carry out work transfer from or to the system when heat is transferred to
the system (process 4-1) or from the system (process 2-3). This is
difficult to achieve in practice.
Frictional effects in compressor leads to irreversibility, hence
completely isentropic compression is not possible to achieve.
Perfect insulation cannot be made practically

Bell-Coleman or Reversed Brayton Cycle

Process 1-2: Reversible, adiabatic compression in a compressor

Process 2-3: Reversible, isobaric heat rejection in a heat
exchanger
Process 3-4: Reversible, adiabatic expansion in a turbine
Process 4-1: Reversible, isobaric heat absorption in a heat
exchanger

Process 1-2: Gas at low pressure is compressed isentropically from

state 1 to state 2.

Process 2-3: Hot and high pressure gas flows through a heat
exchanger and rejects heat sensibly and isobarically to a heat sink.

Process 3-4: High pressure gas from the heat exchanger flows
through a turbine, undergoes isentropic expansion and delivers net
work output.

Process 4-1: Cold and low pressure gas from turbine flows through
the low temperature heat exchanger and extracts heat sensibly and
isobarically from a heat source

COP =

Heat.absorbed
C P (T1 T4 )
=
Work .done
C P (T2 T3 ) C P (T1 T4 )

T1 T4
COP =
(T2 T3 ) (T1 T4 )
T1
1]
T4
=
T
T
T3 [ 2 1] T4 [ 1 1]
T4
T3
T4 [

For.isentropic. process.1 2,
1

T3 P3
T2 P2
.and . =
=

T1
T
4
P1
P4
P2 = P3 , and .P1 = P4

Therefore COP of the cycle can be written as

Comparison of reverse Carnot and reverse Brayton cycle

COP of reverse Brayton cycle decreases as the pressure ratio rp

increases