Adenike A Kolawole, Moradeyo K Odunfa and Miracle O Oyewola
Keywords: Nanoparticles, cooling capacity, refrigeration system, COP, LPG
Abstract: In this paper, performance analysis of Liquefied Petroleum gas with bi-nanoparticles on a domestic refrigerator were carried out experimentally, varying the refrigerant charge (wr) and the two different nanoparticles TiO2 and SiO2 with different gram charge 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5 were dispersed in carpella oil based lubricant, cycling and continuous running tests were performed on a domestic refrigerator under tropical conditions using LPG and Nano-concentration (TiO2 and SiO2) as the working fluid of various charges on a domestic refrigerator system. The performance of the system was investigated using the following test parameters: power consumption, compressor suction and discharge pressures, evaporator air temperature, in order to achieve the specified International Standard Organization (ISO) requirement for standard evaporator air temperature with small refrigerator. The results show that the designed temperature and pulldown time set by ISO for small refrigerator are achieved earlier using refrigerant charge 60g of LPG with nano-particles at 60 minutes, pure-LPG -40C ,TiO2-0.3g -30C and SiO2 -0.3g were achieved. The highest COP (2.53, 4.76 and 2.96) were obtained using 60g charge of pure LPG, SiO2 (0.3g) and TiO2 (0.3g). The average COP obtained were 17.8% and 88 % than that of pure LPG respectively. Based on the results of this study, SiO2 (0.3g) offered lowest power consumption. The compressor consumed 54.2 % less power compared to LPG and 14.3 % less power than TiO2 (0.3g) in the system. In conclusion, the system performed best with LPG-SiO2 (0.3g) in terms of COP and electric power consumption but in terms of cooling capacity LPG SiO2 (0.1g) performed best. This shows that LPG with nano concentration (SiO2, TiO2) can be used as replacement for R134a in domestic refrigerator.
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