The Influence of Room and Ambient Temperatures of Exergy Loss in Air Conditioning Using Ejector as an Expansion Device with R290 as Working Fluid

¹ Department of Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Politeknik Negeri Bandung, Jl. Gegerkalong Hilir, Ciwaruga, Bandung, 40012, Indonesia
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Ahmadu Bello Way, l. Alam Sutera Boulevard no.1, Alam Sutera-Serpong, Bauchi, 930001, Nigeria

^* Corresponding author: sumeru@polban.ac.id

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical approach on exergy loss in an air conditioner (A/C) using ejector asexpansion device with R290 (propane) as working fluid. R290 is a natural refrigerant and environmental friendly, recommended by many researchers as a substitute for R22. In the numerical approach, exergy analysis was carried out on an A/C with cooling capacity of 2.4 kW, and the room and the ambient temperatures were varied from 18 °C to 26 °C and 30 °C to 34 °C respectively. The results show that the total exergy loss in an air conditioner using ejector as an expansion device is lower than that of using conventional as an expansion device. In addition, exergy analysis shows that thegradients of increment of total exergy loss due to increase in the ambient temperature are constant, that is 0.003 for the five different room temperatures, namely 18 °C, 20 °C, 22 °C, 24 °C and 26 °C.