TEST STANDARDS FOR HOUSEHOLD REFRIGERATORS AND FREEZERS .1. PRELIMINARY COMPARISONS

This study compares various testing standards for household refrigerators and freezers, and proposes an empirical correlation for energy consumption between the standards. The proposed correlation is based on the known parameters for a particular cabinet: the ambient temperature, the cabinet interior temperature, and the theoretical coefficient of performance (COP). This correlation can be quite useful to avoid extensive, expensive and time-consuming performance tests and, subsequently, to translate the energy-consumption information easily from one standard to another. The theoretical and experimental ratios of energy consumption between the standards are also tabulated. The standards studied under this investigation are the Australian-New Zealand Standard (ANZS), the International Standard (ISO), the American National Standard (ANS), the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS), and the Chinese National Standard (CNS). Four cabinets (two all-refrigerators and two refrigerator-freezers) were tested under these five standards. Although the correlation developed is versatile and fits the experimental data better for all the standards, there appear to be several factors responsible for the disagreement between the theoretical results and experimental observations. These will be examined in future studies.