DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF LIQUID SUCTION HEAT EXCHANGER IN A VAPOUR COMPRESSION REFRIGERATION SYSTEM
Divagaran P1, Periyasamy M2
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, PG Scholar of Thermal Engineering,
Government College of Engineering, Salem -636011
2Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,
Government College of Engineering, Salem -636011
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Abstract - Performance enhancement of the vapour compression refrigeration systems to gain better refrigerating effect and COP is the current need. This study investigates the effect of adding a liquid-suction heat exchanger on the performance of a vapour compression refrigeration system using R134a. In this application the liquid line is usually placed in contact with the suction line, forming a counter flow heat exchanger. The liquid line is welded to the suction line in the lateral configuration. The temperature of the vapour refrigerant coming out from the evaporator is less than the temperature of the liquid coming out from the condenser. Before the expansion process, heat is transferred from the liquid line to the suction line. As a consequence this in turn reduces the refrigerant quality at the inlet of the evaporator and therefore increases the refrigerating capacity. The LSHE is designed using SOLIDWORKS software for the VCR system and the design is based on the rate of sub-cooling and super-heating. Next to that an analysis is done using ANSYS WORKBENCH on the stream of ANSYS fluent simulation on LSHE to analyze the temperature distribution and velocity of fluid flow. The results revealed that the liquid- suction heat exchanger has a significant effect on the system performance as it influences the sub-cooling and super-heating temperatures. A theoretical analysis has been carried out on the effect of liquid suction heat exchanger on the cooling performance of VCR system. The main objective of this project is to evaluate the performance of modified system with liquid-suction heat exchanger and system without liquid-suction heat exchanger by using R134a and compare their performance improvement with the existing system.
Key Words: LSHE, R134a, ANSYS WORKBENCH, SOLIDWORKS, VCR system, performance improvement.
