An Overview of Technologies for Small-Scale Vapor Compression Refrigeration

This review's goal was to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in miniature vapor compression refrigeration, highlighting recent experimental and modeling research projects for both whole systems and individual parts while taking into account the various applications that have been suggested thus far. Additionally, an attempt was made to provide a summary of passive and active small-scale cooling solutions, highlighting the benefits of vapor compression over the others. The following is a list of the key findings from this review: • The quantity of research articles on micro vapor compression refrigeration, which are mostly focused on cooling electronic components and personal cooling, has decreased during the last ten years. Alternative applications, however, are already being offered for sale in a number of industries, including food preservation, pharmaceutical, medical, and automotive. As a result, more investigation is required to confirm their viability for both current and potential uses, enabling broad commercialization. • It may be inferred that a major obstacle to the extensive research and development of these systems has been the difficulties related to component downsizing. Due to limited commercial availability, many of the components utilized in the articles listed in this review were custom-built by researchers, which slowed technological advancement. However, given the current availability of both individual components and pre-assembled prototypes of miniature VCR systems in the market, it is expected that research will see a resurgence in the upcoming years. • Finally, it is noted that miniature vapor compression refrigeration has not yet reached maturity because there are still a lot of unexplored areas, such as the assessment of low GWP refrigerants, the search for energy savings, advancements in energy efficiency, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and integration with renewable energies. Some of these issues have been addressed for traditional refrigerators, but they now need to be further developed for use in smaller systems.

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