Design and Development of Ice Plant Setup

The aim of the project is to design an experimental set up for a Refrigeration and Air conditioning laboratory. The ice plant test rig is used to find out the capacity of the ice plant, calculate coefficient of performance (COP), reduce the refrigeration time and plot the system performance on P-H chart. For the design purpose cooling load required to produce definite quantity of ice estimated using heat transfer relation is calculated by using vapor compression cycle. The model is examined for its cooling capacity assumed per unit mass flow rate of refrigerant. As per the study, physical and chemical properties of different refrigerants, we come to the final decision that R134a is the best suitable refrigerant for the proposed system. Brine is better suited as a secondary refrigerant for the requirements of the system due to its excellent properties over conventional secondary refrigerant. Capillary tubes or thermostatic expansion valves can be used as expansion devices, copper tubes will be used as the evaporator of shell and tube kind. A hermetically sealed compressor is used in the system.