Experimental Study of Performance Evaluation of Domestic Refrigerator Working with Mixture of Various Refrigerants

In many developing countries Like India, most of the vapor compression based refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump systems continue to run on halogenated refrigerants due to its excellent thermodynamic and thermo- physical properties apart from the low cost. However, the halogenated refrigerants have adverse environmental impacts such as ozone depletion potential (ODP) and global warming potential (GWP). This project is devoted to feasibility study of substitution of LPG which is locally available and comprises 24.4% propane, 56.4% butane and 17.2% isobutene. The LPG is cheap and possesses an environmentally friendly nature with no ozone depletion potential (ODP). It is used in Libya for cooking purposes. Experimental result showed that the LPG refrigerant with charge of 25g worked well under unloaded condition. It took 15 minutes to bring down evaporator temperature from 31 degree Celsiuse to 0 degree Celsius, in comparison to 90g R-134a which took 14 minutes for the same, under designed project set up. While LPG charge of 35g worked well under unload condition. It took 12 minutes to bring down the evaporator temperature from 31 degree Celsius to 0 degree Celsius in comparison to 90g R-134a which took 15 minutes for the same, under designed project. Ammeter continuously gave reading in the range of 0.6 A to 0.9 A and voltmeter as 210V while working with LPG as refrigerant in comparison to R134a in which ammeter gave reading of 1A and voltmeter as 220V. From here we can easily conclude that power consumed by compressor while working with LPG as refrigerant decreased considerably.