Performance analysis of a household refrigerator by integrating PCM heat exchanger, through CFD simulation

Abstract

In this modern era nearly every household uses at least one refrigerator to stock foods and reserve its quality for longer period. Refrigerators consume a large amount of electricity in the national region because of their consistent usage. Several methods have been introduced to decrease the consumption of energy in the refrigeration systems. Among those methods incorporation of Phase Changing Material (PCM) is a new method to make the refrigerator more efficient. The PCM materials can store and release a huge amount of energy by changing its phase from solid to liquid and vice versa. PCM will store energy when compressor is ON by changing its phase, when temperature reaches its set value then the compressor will turn OFF. PCM will start working when temperature reaches to the melting temperature of PCM, by giving back its stored energy to the system. This procedure will improve compressor OFF time, which will lead to decrease in the usage of consumption of energy. The CFD simulation is taken to predict the results; 2D simulation is performed, and with that solidification/melting effect is also considered. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the usage of PCM in the refrigerator, for that different arrangement and combination of PCM in refrigerator are taken for this work. Simulation results are achieved by using ANSYS fluent. The CFD simulation results show that the use of PCM is an effective technique to maintain temperature of the system at a considerable range during compressor OFF-mode. From the simulation results it is concluded that surface area exposure and configuration arrangement of PCMs significantly affects the temperature inside the system and its duration. Decrease in temperature is achieved from 291 K to 282 K for 600 seconds as configuration and combination of PCMs were kept on changing. From comparative analysis it is concluded that the combination of PCM-1, PCM-2 and PCM-3 gives the best results.