AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECT OF REFRIGERANT CHARGE LEVEL ON AN AUTOMOTIVE AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM

During the last 25 years automotive air conditioning (AAC) systems have significant development introduced by the industry and research institutes in the world to minimize the global warming threat to the environment. This paper reports the results of a study on the performance of an AAC system with measuring the compressor driving speed and the refrigerant leakage. For this purpose an experimental set up is designed and constructed to investigate the system performance. Although, the manufacturer's recommended amount for the tests with R-134a as refrigerant was 750 g, the experiments were also carried out by selecting different amount of the same refrigerant charges to analyse the coefficient of performance (COP), the cooling capacity and the compressor power change with respect to the rotating speed of the compressor. The evaluation of experimental data revealed that the best cooling capacity was achieved at 500 g refrigerant charge. Although, while the charge level decreased 40% below or increased 20% above the 500g of the charge amount, cooling capacity loss increased up to 25% when optimum value of 500 g of the cooling refrigerant was utilized. The test results proved in each case that increasing the compressor driving speed cause almost a linear change in the corresponding power level. The test results also shown that COP of the cooling system was decreased effectively when the revolution speed increased for any specified charge amount of the refrigerant.