Supercritical Carbon Dioxide as Refrigerant

Report on Practical Work in Industry

by Paul Tischer, TU Dresden
Abstract
At the TU Dresden all mechanical engineering students have to spend the 7th semester in
industry and have to write a report about what they have learnt and on which topics they have
worked. In the winter semester 2004/05 I spent 5 months at the Star Refrigeration Company
in Glasgow, Scotland. My advisors at the TU Dresden and at Star had proposed that I work
on problems associated with the use of CO2 in refrigeration systems, where the
condensation temperature is above the critical temperature of CO2. I worked on three tasks:
1. Comparison of different designs for an air cooled condenser/gas cooler
Thermodynamic optimisation called for a strict counter-current heat exchanger, but the large
difference between the volumetric flow rates of the two fluids (air and supercritical CO2)
demanded a cross-flow arrangement. Additional complications were, that the air should be
intermittently re-cooled by sprayed in water and I had to search for the optimum high pressure
level of the CO2 refrigeration cycle.
As a result I identified two designs with the greatest potential. Now the so far unknown
manufacturing costs have to decide, which is the overall best solution.
2. Investigation of the suitability of an existing NH3 Low Pressure Receiver for operation
in a CO2 system
The specialty of this receiver is a built in auxiliary evaporator, where surplus liquid from the
outlet of the main evaporator is collected and evaporated by heat exchange with high pressure
CO2. The main difficulty was the non-availability of reliable data for the heat transfer
coefficient of boiling CO2.
The result of the investigation was, that all available designs for NH3 were suitable in
principle but to large for the intended test rig
3. Planning, building and initial operation of a new test rig for an air conditioning
application
The revolutionary idea is to replace the usual 6/12C cold water loop, which distributes
cooling to the different air conditioning units of a building, by a loop, where liquid CO2 boils
at 10 C, i. e. at 4.5 MPa. I had to plan a test loop with a hermetic Danfoss compressor and a
new type of CO2 gas cooler (condenser), where warm water can be produced as side product.
Also the first tests could be performed.
I had to solve a lot of problems, which many companies will have to learn to handle, when
they switch to CO2: Non-availability of components, choice of correct initial charge, handling
the pressure rise during standstill, measurement of temperatures in supercritical CO2 loops.
On the last point I got the impression, that even above the critical pressure there still exist
phenomena similar to condensation, i. e. in a stream there can exist a division between a
colder high density stream and a somewhat warmer low density stream. This is the only
explanation, which I have for certain temperature measurements, which seem to contradict the
first law of thermodynamics.