Analysis of evaporator effectiveness on 1/2 cycle refrigeration systems: A case study on lpg fueled vehicles

The ½ cycle refrigeration system on LPG fueled vehicles has a significant cooling effect. However, the cooling is very dependent on the heat exchange process in the evaporator. Therefore, this paper analyses the deviation of the actual cooling curve from the ideal scenario carried out on a laboratory scale. The analytical method used is the calculation of the effectiveness of the evaporator, which compares the actual to the potential heat transfer capacity. The LPG flow rate was varied from 1-6 g/s, while the evaporation pressure ranged between 0.05, 0.10, and 0.15 MPa, which applied to compact type evaporators with dimensions of 262 x 200 mm, with a thickness of 65 mm. The research results confirm that the higher the LPG mass flow rate, the lower the heat transfer effectiveness. At the higher LPG mass flow rate, heat transfer occurs less optimally, due to incomplete evaporation of LPG in the evaporator.