Performance of a finned-tube evaporator optimized for different refrigerants and its effect on system efficiency

Published

May 17, 2005

Author(s)

Piotr A. Domanski, David A. Yashar, Minsung Kim

Abstract

This paper presents a comparable evaluation of R600a (isobutane), R290 (propane), R134a, R22, R410A, and R32 in an optimized finned-tube evaporator, and analyzes the impact of evaporator effects on the system coefficient of performance (COP). The study relied on a detailed evaporator model derived from NIST's EVAP-COND simulation package and used the ISHED1 scheme employing a non-Darwinian learnable evolution model for circuitry optimization. In the process, 4500 circuitry designs were generated and evaluated for each refrigerant. The obtained evaporator optimization results were incorporated in a conventional analysis of the vapor compression cycle. For a theoretical cycle analysis without accounting for evaporator effects, the COP spread for the studied refrigerants was as high as 11.7 %. For cycle simulations including evaporator effects, the COP of R290 was better than that of R22 by up to 3.5 %, while the remaining refrigerants performed approximately within a 2 % COP band of the R22 baseline for the two condensing temperatures considered.

Citation

International Journal of Refrigeration

Volume

28

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Air conditioning, Refrigerating system, Evaporator, Finned tube, Modeling, Optimization, R600a, R410A, Propane, R32, R134a, R22, Comparison

Citation

Domanski, P. , Yashar, D. and Kim, M. (2005), Performance of a finned-tube evaporator optimized for different refrigerants and its effect on system efficiency, International Journal of Refrigeration, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=910428 (Accessed May 7, 2026)

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