3.

Experiment design

Ammonia refrigeration systems are commonly used in big industrial facilities (food industry,
process industry, etc.) and these types of installations are very expensive, so it is practically
impossible to build such a large capacity ammonia installation only for experimental setup and
measurements. The possibility of application and testing of this type of system occurred during
the large scale reconstruction and adaptation of a frozen food factory ammonia refrigeration
system. The design concept of the factory refrigeration system is based on three temperature
operating conditions (Table 1).

The facility refrigeration system has six screw compressor units, four separator vessels, four
evaporative condensers, one thermosyphon receiver, flooded evaporators with pump circulation,
two classic batch freezers, two fluidized bed freezers, three vertical plate freezers, pipelines,
pumps and other equipment.
The high-stage screw compressors use the thermosyphon oil cooling system. The low-stage
screw compressors oil cooling system was achieved with ammonia liquid injection into the
compressor discharge pipeline and desuperheating (isobaric cooling of superheated vapor) was
achieved by injecting throttled liquid from the condenser into the superheated vapor of the low-
stage compressor discharge line(Detail A and B on Fig. 4)
The compressors were equipped with the automatic control unit Unisab II and Unisab III
(Johnson Controls) with the possibility for parameter values display reading and external
SCADA connectionvia Ethernet switch with a personal computer (ISAC). Pressure and
temperature transmitters (Danfoss type AKS, typical accuracy ±1%) were positioned at all points
of interest. Measured data and installation operating information were centrally recorded on the
main computer located in the control room. Injected refrigerant had instantaneous cooling effect
and that was visible on the outside pipe wall (Fig. 5) in the form of the white thin ice layer. The
thermo expansion valve sensor was located far away (6-7 m) from the injection point in order to
detect stationary fluid temperature of mixture. The calculation scheme of there frigeration
system (Fig. 6) was used to create log p-h diagram (Fig. 7). Points 5, 6, 11, 12, 21, 22,29 and 32,
presented in Fig. 7. Are predicted (not measured) values and they are omitted from Fig. 6.
Because at the time of data collection this system operating mode (33ºC) was out of function.
The refrigerant circulating rate had values n = 4 (for all coldrooms, rooms for product
preparation, product packing and manipulative spaces) and n = 5 (for fluidized bed freezers,
classic batch freezers and vertical plate freezers). For both the low-stage and the high-stage
compressors refrigerant at the suction point was saturated, suction line superheating was þ2 ºC
and the compressor isentropic efficiency value was 0.65. Evaporation andcondensation processes
were considered isobaric.
4. Results and discussion

(In figure 9) mass flow rate (due to the injected amount of liquid ammonia that will be used for
oil cooling and desuperheating) by dividing it with mass flow rate of the low-stage compressor,
COP reduction is visible. This means that if we want to change the system conception by using
the thermosyphon system instead of the liquid injection system for low-stage compressors oil
cooling, we will have 37% less ammonia through high-stage compressors (11% from LPC-5
±10% from LPC-7 +16% from LPC. The increment of mass flow rate caused by desuperheating
would remain the same (15 + 14 + 17 = 46%). The differences in the required quantity of the
injected refrigerant liquid amount for those temperatures are approximately 63% for oil cooling
and 80% for desuperheating (74% in general). The environmental parameters have great
influence on condensation temperature variations (Fig. 10), which cause significant changes in
the required amount of injected liquid refrigerant and compressors specific work.