Performance Evaluation of A Household Refrigerator Using Cuo Nanoparticle Lubricant Mixture and Various Other Compressor Oils with Different Condenser Modes

The objective of this paper was to study the performance of household refrigerator having both air and water-cooled condenser, with 0.06% mass fraction CuO nanoparticle-lubricant mixture and different types of compressor oils. The experiment was done using HFC134a as the refrigerant, CuO nanoparticles, Polyol-ester oil (POE) oil which is used as the conventional lubricant in the household refrigerator and SUNISO 3GS mineral oil as the lubricant alternatively. The result indicates that the refrigerator performance had improved while using CuO nanoparticle-lubricant mixture. The performance was also improved when HFC134a/SUNISO 3GS mineral oil system was used instead of HFC134a/POE oil system and there was also an enhancement when water-cooled condenser was used instead of the conventional air-cooled condenser on all load conditions. The HFC134a/CuO/SUNISO 3GS mineral oil system works normally and safely in the refrigerator. HFC134a/CuO/SUNISO 3GS mineral oil system reduced the energy consumption between 12% and 19% when compared with the HFC134a/POE oil system and between 9% and 14% while working with water-cooled condenser on various load conditions. There was also an enhancement in coefficient of performance (COP) when CuO nanoparticle-lubricant mixture was used instead of POE oil as the lubricant. The water cooled heat exchanger was designed and the system was modified by retrofitting it, along with the conventional air-cooled condenser by making a bypass line and thus the system can be utilized as a waste heat recovery unit. Experimental result shows that about 200 litres of hot water at a temperature of about 58oC over a day can be generated. Techno economic analysis shows that the installation cost and running cost of the waste heat recovery system for a day is much lower than that of a conventional