Numerical and Experimental Study of the Influence of Frost Formation and Defrosting on the Performance of Industrial Evaporator Coils

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Date
2006Author
Aljuwayhel, Nawaf F.
Publisher
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Show full item recordAbstract
The main objective of an evaporator in any refrigeration system is to extract thermal
energy from a conditioned space by recirculating air through a refrigerated coil.
However, when an air-cooled evaporator operates at a temperature below the freezing
point of water with a coincident entering air dew point temperature that is above the
evaporator coil surface temperature, frost will form on the evaporator surface. The
presence of frost reduces the performance of an evaporator and the penalty is
proportional to the amount of frost that has accumulated. For this reason, the accumulated
frost must be periodically removed by the use of a defrost process.
A variety of methods are used to remove frost, however, the most widely-used defrost
technique in industry is hot gas defrosting (HGD). The HGD technique depends on
temporarily converting the evaporator to a condenser by passing hot gas through the coil;
the hot gas is usually obtained directly from the compressor discharge. The HGD
technique is a simple and effective method to remove frost rapidly, and the additional
hardware required for the HGD process is relatively inexpensive to install. However,
during the HGD process, a fraction of the energy supplied to the coil is ultimately
transferred to the refrigerated in various forms and becomes a parasitic load (latent and sensible) on the refrigerated space. This additional energy added to the space must be
extracted by other evaporators within the freezer space (or, if only one evaporator is in
the space then the product temperature must rise). Hence, both the frosting and the
defrosting processes penalize the efficiency of the cooling system.
In this research, the performance of a large scale industrial evaporator operating under
frosting conditions is experimentally monitored during both cooling mode (which occurs
under frosting conditions) and defrost mode. Theoretical models of the evaporator coil
during the cooling and the defrosting modes have been developed and validated using the
experimental data. The degradation of the performance of the evaporator during the
cooling mode and the parasitic heat load associated with the defrost mode are presented.
The two models are used to optimize the net cooling by minimizing all the penalties
associated with running the refrigeration system. Guidelines relative to the most energy
efficient operation of industrial refrigeration systems are presented.
Subject
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2006.
Dissertations Academic Mechanical Engineering.
University of Wisconsin--Madison. College of Engineering.
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/7610Description
Under the supervision of Professors Gregory F. Nellis, Sanford A. Klein, and Douglas T. Reindl; 288pp.
Citation
Aljuwayhel, N.F. (2006). Numerical and Experimental Study of the Influence of Frost Formation and Defrosting on the Performance of Industrial Evaporator Coils. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.