Performance Studies of Refrigerated Van having PCM for Generating Off Site Refrigeration Effect

Munesh Kumar Sharma^1,* and D. Buddhi²

^1,*Millennium Institute of Technology, Biharigadh, Saharanpur-247001, India

²Shivalik College of Engineering, Shimla Bypass, Dehradun-248197, India

A refrigeration system incorporating phase change material (PCM) is proposed to maintain refrigerated van at the desired thermal conditions. The advantage of using PCM to maintain low temperatures is that a conventional refrigeration system does not have to be located on-board the vehicle. In addition, Thermal Energy Storage through Phase Change material has been used for wide applications in the field of air conditioning and refrigeration especially at industrial scale. The specific use of this Thermal Storage has been for Energy Storage during low demand and release of this Energy during peak loads with potential to provide energy savings due to this. The system consumes less energy and produces much lower local greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The phase change material is charged by a refrigeration unit located off the vehicle when stationary. The PCM is discharged and provides cooling when in service. A new PCM with a lower cost than currently available PCMs was developed, suitable for maintaining the refrigerated van at a temperature of 5^oC. The PCM has a melting temperature of -15.2^oC and a latent heat of 284 kJ/ kg. The use of latent heat storage is especially suited to the storage of energy to prolong the food preservation time of refrigerators fresh food compartment & also improve the cooling cycle by its release at appropriate time. A prototype system was constructed and test results proved that the proposed refrigeration system is feasible for mobile transport.

Keywords: Phase change material (PCM), Thermal energy storage, Greenhouse gas (GHG).

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