Switch loss of a frost-free refrigerator-freezer with parallel dual-evaporator refrigeration system and its mitigation

• Date:2025-04-30
• Title of Paper:Switch loss of a frost-free refrigerator-freezer with parallel dual-evaporator refrigeration system and its mitigation
• Journal:Science and Technology for the Built Environment
• Summary:The parallel dual-evaporator system has energy-saving potential in frost-free refrigerator-freezers, since it can provide proper
  evaporating temperature difference for the refrigerator and the freezer, respectively. However, energy loss is generated during the
  transition period of switches between refrigerating (R-) and freezing (F-) cycles in actual use. In this article, switch loss of a frost-free
  refrigerator-freezer with parallel dual-evaporator refrigeration system is studied experimentally. Results show that the transition
  process after F- to R-cycle switch takes 7.17 min and consists of three stages according to R-evaporator’s feeding: short feeding
  (1.83 min), no feeding (2 min), and continuous feeding (3.34 min). The starvation in R-evaporator during the first two stages leads to
  switch loss for the refrigerator-freezer, by consuming 23.3% electric energy but yielding only 6.9% capacity for an entire R-cycle.
  The pump-down (P/D) action before R-cycles accelerates refrigerant’s pumping from F-evaporator and feeding to R-evaporator, thus
  recovering part of the capacity loss. However, the introduction of P/D is not necessarily energy-efficient because P/D itself consumes
  considerable electric energy. By contrast, R- to F-cycle switch has little effect on refrigerator-freezer performance due to instant
  feeding. Dynamic simulation on the transition process will be provided in the future.
• Co-author:赵日晶，黄东，彭学院，张耀吉
• Volume:2019 （25）
• Page Number:387-385
• Translation or Not:No
• Date of Publication:2018-11-23