กิตติ นิลผึ้ง. Characteristics ofHFC-134a flowing through short-tube orifices. Doctoral Degree(Mechanical Engineering). King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. KMUTT Library. : King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, 2010.
Characteristics ofHFC-134a flowing through short-tube orifices
Abstract:
The short-tube orifice is one type of expansion device popularly used in residential and
automotive air-conditioning systems. The advantages of the short-tube orifice are
simplicity, low initial cost, and low starting torque of the compressor. The short-tube
orifice is made from extremely small bore hollow brass ingots with diameters of 1-2
mm and LID =3-35. Although the short-tube orifice's physical configuration is very
simple, the flashing flow behaviours inside the tube are complicated. Therefore, a clear
understanding of the flow mechanisms of the refrigerant through a short-tube orifice is
very useful and important for designing the air-conditioning system to obtain the
optimum condition. In the present study, the flashing flow mechanism of the new HFC
refrigerants, including HFC-134a and HFC-410A through short-tube orifices that have
been developed for use as alternatives to chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) and
hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) refrigerants are presented. The effects of upstream
pressure, downstream pressure, degree of subcooling, channel orientation, short-tube
orifice diameter and short-tube orifice length on the refrigerant flow behavior, i.e.,
including pressure distributions, temperature distributions, flow pattern, metastable
flow, choked flow and mass flow rate are investigated. Short-tube orifice diameters
ranging between 0.605 and 1.2 mm with length-to-diameter ratios ranging between 2
and 33 are used in the experiments. Two groups of short-tube orifices are used in the
experiment. The first is used to visualise the flow pattern. The second is used to
measure temperature and pressure distributions along the short-tube orifice. For HFC134a,
the test runs are performed at upstream pressure ranging between 900 and 1300
kPa, downstream pressure ranging between 300 and 400 kPa, and degree of subcooling
ranging between 1 and 12?C. For HFC-410A, the experiments are done at upstream
pressures ranging between 2100 and 2600 kPa, downstream pressures ranging between
1000 and 1250 kPa and degree of subcooling between 4 and 12?C. The experimental
results show that metastable flow and choked flow phenomena exist inside the shorttube
orifices over the whole range of experimental conditions. The metastable liquid
flow region increases with increasing degree of subcooling and upstream pressure. The
results of pressure distribution inside the short-tube orifices indicate that accelerational
pressure drop at the inlet and outlet has a significant effect on the total pressure drop
across the short-tube orifice. The mass flow rate is directly proportional to the upstream
pressure and degree of subcooling, whereas it is strongly affected by the short-tube
diameter. The downstream pressure has insignificant effects on the mass flow rate and
pressure distribution inside a short-tube orifice. In addition, a numerical model for
predicting the flashing flow characteristics of refrigerants through short-tube orifices is
also developed. The refrigerant flow behavior inside the short-tube orifice is divided
into three regions; subcooled liquid region, metastable liquid region, and two-phase
region. In two-phase region, the annular flow pattern is developed based on the
conservation of mass, energy, and momentum. The results indicate that the model with
the correlation of Lackme (1979) and Miropolskiy et al.(1970) gives the best prediction
with mean absolute deviation of 11.86 %. Finally, the selection charts for predicting the
mass flow rate through short-tube orifices are proposed for practical application.