DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A LOW-COST DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM BASED ON ARDUINO FOR REFRIGERATION FACILITIES

Nowadays the most used and extended technology in artificial cold production are vapour compression systems. Refrigeration facilities based on this technology need electricity to work and its efficiency is essential for a sustainable development. To minimize this value it is necessary to monitor its operation in order to have real data to improve its behaviour. Some thermophysical variables as temperature, pressure or electrical power consumption allows monitoring almost completely the operating conditions of the refrigeration facility. However, the difficulty and the high cost of data acquisition systems block this idea being the main drawback. The main objective of this work is to present a low-cost data acquisition system based on Arduino platform as a powerful tool to show the most important data of a small refrigeration facility as a freezer, air conditioning or vending machines. The DAQ low-cost system has been developed using an Arduino MEGA 2560 with the following sensors: 4x NTC thermistors to measure temperature, 2x pressure gauges to register high and low pressure levels in a refrigeration facility; 1x combined humidity and temperature sensors to provide information about the internal environment (used to cold down the products) and one wattmeter to measure the electricity power consumption of the facility. The registered data is sent via USB to the computer to record and display them in a graphical interface developed in LabView. The developed DAQ system will be used in practical sessions over a experimental refrigerating facility. The aim of this work is to ensure a quickly understanding and a better assimilation of the theoretical concepts explained in class.