Analysis of energy saving performance for household refrigerator with thermal storage of condenser and evaporator

The heat transfer performances of evaporators and condensers significantly affect the efficiency of household refrigerators. For enhancing heat transfer, of the condensers and evaporators, a novel dual energy storage (DES) refrigerator with both heat storage condenser (HSC) and cold storage evaporator (CSE) is proposed. The performance comparison of three kinds of energy storage refrigerators: HSC refrigerator, CSE refrigerator and DES refrigerator is analyzed by establishing dynamic simulation models. According to the simulation results, the DES refrigerator combines the advantage of HSC refrigerator and CSE refrigerator, it has more balanced operational cycle and higher evaporation pressure and temperature. The DES refrigerator shows a best energy saving performance among the three energy storage refrigerators with largest off-time to on-time ratio of 43 and the electrical consumption saving can reach 32%, which is greater than the sum (28%) of the other two kinds of energy storage refrigerators. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.