Performance of a domestic refrigerator under influence of varied expansion device capacity, refrigerant charge and ambient temperature

This paper reports experimental results of an on/off cycling domestic refrigerator at varied expansion device capacity (EDC), quantity of charge and ambient temperature. It was found that the energy consumption is insensitive to varied EDC and charge within a wide range of settings. For the charge this is explained by the low side accumulator, which buffers over- and undercharge. It was also found that the optimum charge increased at lower ambient temperature. The paper describes an experimental procedure on how to determine the capillary tube length and the quantity of charge for a domestic refrigerator/freezer. This procedure is recommended since it takes different thermal masses and loads into consideration and since the potential for energy saving with a more sophisticated method appears to be limited.