Recently, Egypt is facing an energy problem due to the increase in consumption and population. There are two ways to face this issue; first, the world should be more interested in renewable energy resources and the second is the efficient use of energy. Refrigeration and air conditioning systems have a high rate of electrical power consumption. For that, the object of the present work is to enhance the performance of the vapour compression cycle as well as to reduce the energy consumption resultantly. To achieve these goals, the performance of a vapor compression cycle with nanomaterials additives to the primary loop of refrigeration (refrigerant loop) is investigated experimentally. Mineral Oil with AL2O3 nanomaterials additives is used to enhance the performance in the vapor compression cycle with R-143a refrigerant. The stability of nanofluids was first tested by using sedimentation test. The results showed that the optimum concentration for nanolubricant is 0.1 % weight percentage. Results showed that refrigerant heat transfer coefficient increased by 22% maximum when nanofluids were used. The experimental results indicate that R-134a and mineral oil with AL2O3 nanoparticles enhances the vapor compression cycle performance by 22.5 % theoretically and 10% actually with 10 % less energy consumption. These results were obtained with 0.1% mass fraction of nano-lubricant oil. |
