Thesis: Development of a High‐Performance Compact Refrigeration Cooling Prototype

Supervisor: Prof. TieJun (TJ) Zhang

My M.Sc. research aimed to design and build a high-performance, compact, and portable recuperator-based vapor compression cycle equipped with a 300W linear compressor. The notion behind using a recuperator is to extract the heat from the working fluid exiting the condenser to further heat the refrigerant flow before entering the compressor. This concept has a three-fold benefit: 1. maintain a superheated flow at the compressor inlet, 2. Reduce the condenser size, and 3. sustain a two-phase refrigerant flow within the evaporator. As a result, the cooling test-bed achieved a high coefficient of performance (COP) of 4.5. Furthermore, Component models of the linear compressor, fin-tube heat exchanger, brazed plate heat exchanger, and metering valve have been developed and validated against the experimental data. These component models have been integrated to predict the pressure and temperature changes in the refrigeration test-bed.