Introduction

REFRIGERATION AND AIR

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 Objectives of the Course
At the completion of the course, students will understand:
 The basic concepts in refrigeration.
 The working principles of vapor-compression, vapor-absorption, and air
refrigeration cycles.
 The major equipment and the operations of vapor-compression, vapor-
absorption, and air refrigeration systems.
 The basic concepts in air-conditioning.
 The principles involved in the determination of cooling-load calculations
and design of AC systems.
 Air-Conditioning equipment understanding and selection

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 Definitions
Refrigeration is the branch of science which deals with
the process of reducing and maintaining the
temperature of a space or material below the
temperature of the surrounding.
Refrigeration is the action of cooling, and in practice
this requires removal of heat and discarding it at a
higher temperature. Refrigeration is therefore the
science of moving heat from low temperature to high
temperature.

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 Definitions
Air conditioning refers to the control of
temperature, moisture content, cleanliness,
air quality and air circulation as required by
occupants, a process or a product in the
space.

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Objectives of the lesson:
The objectives of this lesson are to introduce the student to:
Applications of refrigeration in:
a. Food processing, preservation and distribution
b. Chemical and process industries
c. Special Applications such as cold treatment of
metals, medical, construction, ice skating etc.
d. Comfort air-conditioning
Applications of air conditioning, namely:
e. Industrial, such as in textiles, printing,
manufacturing, photographic, computer rooms,
power plants, vehicular etc.
f. Comfort – commercial, residential etc.

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The major applications of refrigeration can be
grouped into following four major equally important
areas.
1. Food processing, preservation and
distribution
2. Chemical and process industries
3. Special Applications
4. Comfort air-conditioning

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 Application of refrigeration in Food processing,
preservation and distribution
Storage of Raw Fruits and Vegetables: It is well-
known that some bacteria are responsible for
degradation of food, and enzymatic processing cause
ripening of the fruits and vegetables.
The growth of bacteria and the rate of enzymatic
processes are reduced at low temperature.
This helps in reducing the spoilage and improving the
shelf life of the food.

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In case of fruits and vegetables, the use of
refrigeration starts right after harvesting to remove
the post-harvest heat, transport in refrigerated
transport to the cold storage or the processing plant.
A part of it may be stored in cold storage to maintain
its sensory qualities and a part may be distributed to
retail shops, where again refrigeration is used for
short time storage.
Depending upon the size, the required capacity of
refrigeration plants for cold storages can be very
high.
Ammonia is one of the common refrigerants used in
cold storages.
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Meat and poultry: These items also require refrigeration right after
slaughter during processing, packaging. Short-term storage is
done at 0oC. Long-term storage requires freezing and storage at
-25oC.
Dairy Products: The important dairy products are milk, butter,
buttermilk and ice cream.
To maintain good quality, the milk is cooled in bulk milk coolers
immediately after being taken from cow.
Bulk milk cooler is a large refrigerated tank that cools it between
10 to 15oC. Then it is transported to dairy farms, where it is
pasteurized.
Pasteurization involves heating it to 73oC and holding it at this
temperature for 20 seconds. Thereafter, it is cooled to 3 to 4oC.
The dairies have to have a very large cooling capacity, since a
large quantity of milk has to be immediately cooled after arrival.

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Beverages: Production of beer, wine and concentrated fruit
juices require refrigeration.
The taste of many drinks can be improved by serving them
cold or by adding ice to them.
Juices can be preserved for a longer period of time than the
fruits.
Fruit juice concentrates when frozen can be more easily
shipped and transported by road.
To preserve the taste and flavor of juice, the water is driven
out of it by boiling it at low temperature under reduced
pressure.
The concentrate is frozen and transported at –20oC.

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Processing and distribution of frozen food:
Many vegetables, meat, fish and poultry are frozen
to sustain the taste, which nearly duplicates that of
the fresh product.
Freezing retains the sensory qualities of color,
texture and taste apart from nutritional qualities.
The refrigeration systems for frozen food
applications are very liberally designed, since the
food items are frozen in shortest period of time.
Ready-to-eat frozen foods, packed dinners and
bakery items are frozen and stored at temperatures
of –25 to -20oC for distribution to retail stores during
peak demands or off-season demands.
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Applications of refrigeration in chemical and process
industries
The industries like petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants
and paper pulp industries etc. require very large cooling
capacities.
The main applications of refrigeration in chemical and process
industries involve the following categories.
1. Separation of gases: In petrochemical plant, temperatures
as low as –150oC with refrigeration capacities as high as
10,000 Tons of Refrigeration (TR) are used for separation
of gases by fractional distillation.
Some gases condense readily at lower temperatures from
the mixtures of hydrocarbon.
Propane is used as refrigerant in many of these plants.

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2. Condensation of Gases: Some gases that are produced
synthetically, are condensed to liquid state by cooling, so
that these can be easily stored and transported in liquid
state. For example, in synthetic ammonia plant, ammonia is
condensed at –10 to 10oC before filling in the cylinders,
storage and shipment. This low temperature requires
refrigeration.
3. Dehumidification of Air: Low humidity air is required in
many pharmaceutical industries. It is also required for air
liquefaction plants.
This is also required to prevent static electricity and prevents
short circuits in places where high voltages are used.
The air is cooled below its dew point temperature, so that
some water vapor condenses out and the air gets
dehumidified.

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4. Solidification of Solute: One of the processes of separation of
a substance or pollutant or impurity from liquid mixture is by its
solidification at low temperature. Lubricating oil is dewaxed in
petroleum industry by cooling it below –25oC. Wax solidifies at
about –25oC.
5. Storage as liquid at low pressure: Liquid occupies less space
than gases.
 Most of the refrigerants are stored at high pressure.
 This pressure is usually their saturation pressure at atmospheric
temperature.
 For some gases, saturation pressure at room temperature is very
high hence these are stored at relatively low pressure and low
temperature.
 For example natural gas is stored at 0.7 bar gauge pressure and
–130oC. Heat gain by the cylinder walls leads to boiling of some
gas, which is compressed, cooled and expanded back to 0.7 bar
gauge.
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6. Removal of Heat of Reaction: In many chemical
reactions, efficiency is better if the reaction occurs below
room temperature. This requires refrigeration. If these
reactions are exothermic in nature, then more refrigeration
capacities are required. Production of viscose rayon,
cellular acetate and synthetic rubber are some of the
examples. Fermentation is also one of the examples of this.
7. Cooling for preservation: Many compounds decompose
at room temperature or these evaporate at a very fast rate.
Certain drugs, explosives and natural rubber can be stored
for long periods at lower temperatures.
8. Recovery of Solvents: In many chemical processes
solvents are used, which usually evaporate after reaction.
These can be recovered by condensation at low
temperature by refrigeration system. Some of the examples
are acetone in film manufacture and carbon tetrachloride in
textile production.
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Special applications of refrigeration
In this category we consider applications other than chemical
uses. These are in manufacturing processes, applications in
medicine, construction units etc.
1. Cold Treatment of Metals: The dimensions of precision
parts and gauge blocks can be stabilized by soaking the
product at temperature around – 90oC.
The hardness and wear resistance of carburized steel can be
increased by this process.
 Keeping the cutting tool at –100oC for 15 minutes can also
increase the life of cutting tool.
In deep drawing process, the ductility of metal increases at
low temperature.
Mercury patterns frozen by refrigeration can be used for
precision casting.
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2. Medical: Blood plasma and antibiotics are manufactured by
freeze-drying process where water is made to sublime at low
pressure and low temperature. This does not affect the tissues of
blood.
Centrifuges refrigerated at –10oC, are used in the manufacture of
drugs.
Localized refrigeration by liquid nitrogen can be used as anesthesia
also.
3. Construction: Setting of concrete is an exothermic process.
If the heat of setting is not removed, the concrete will expand and
produce cracks in the structure.
Concrete may be cooled by cooling sand, gravel and water before
mixing them or by passing chilled water through the pipes
embedded in the concrete.
Another application is to freeze the wet soil by refrigeration to
facilitate its excavation.
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4. Desalination of Water: In some countries fresh
water is scarce and seawater is desalinated to
obtain fresh water.
Solar energy is used in some cases for
desalination.
An alternative is to freeze the seawater. The ice
thus formed will be relatively free of salt. The ice can
be separated and thawed to obtain fresh water.

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5. Ice Manufacture: This was the classical application of
refrigeration.
Ice was manufactured in plants by dipping water containers
in chilled brine and it used to take about 36 hours to freeze all
the water in cans into ice.
The ice thus formed was stored in ice warehouses. Now that
small freezers and icemakers are available.
 Hotels and restaurants make their own ice, in a hygienic
manner. Household refrigerators also have the facility to
make ice in small quantities.
The use of ice warehouses is dwindling because of this
reason.
Coastal areas still have ice plants where it is used for
transport of iced fish.

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Refrigeration systems are also required in remote and rural
areas for a wide variety of applications such as storage of
milk, vegetables, fruits, food grains etc., and also for storage
of vaccines etc. in health centers.
 One typical problem with many of the rural and remote
areas is the continuous availability of electricity.
Since space is not constraint, and most of these areas in
tropical countries are blessed with alternate energy sources
such as solar energy, biomass etc., it is preferable to use
these clean and renewable energy sources in these areas.
Thermal energy driven absorption systems have been used
in some instances.
Vapour compression systems that run on photovoltaic (PV)
cells have also been developed for small applications. Figure
shows the schematic of solar PV cell driven vapor
compression refrigeration system for vaccine storage.
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Solar energy driven refrigeration system for vaccine storage

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 Application of air
conditioning:
Air-conditioning is required for improving processes and
materials apart from comfort air-conditioning required for
comfort of people.
The life and efficiency of electronics devices increases at lower
temperatures.
Computer and microprocessor-based equipment also require air-
conditioning for their efficient operation. Modern electronic
equipment with Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) chips
dissipates relatively large quantities of energy in a small volume.
As a result, unless suitable cooling is provided, the chip
temperature can become extremely high. As the computing
power of computers increases, more and more cooling will be
required in a small volume. Some supercomputers require liquid
nitrogen for cooling.
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Air-conditioning applications can be divided into two
categories, namely, industrial and comfort-air conditioning.
Industrial Air-conditioning:
Their main purpose is to provide conducive conditions for processes and
production of products.

Laboratories:
* Precision measurement
* Performance testing of materials, equipment and processes at
controlled temperature and relative humidity.

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Printing:
• Temperature and humidity control
• For the paper not to shrink
• To reduce static electricity, curling and buckling of
paper

Manufacture of Precision Parts:

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Pharmaceutical Industries:
• To obtain sterile atmosphere
• Airborne bacteria and dust must be removed by filters in AC systems
• Reduced humidity to avoid gelatin capsule from

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Computer Rooms:
• Temperature, humidity and cleanliness have to be controlled
• Temperature of around 25oC and 50%RH is maintained in these rooms
• Air has to be clean as dust spoils CD drives, printers…

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Comfort Air-Conditioning:
Energy of food is converted into chemical energy for
functioning of brain, lungs, heart and other organs and this
energy is ultimately rejected to the surroundings.
Also the internal organs require a temperature close to 35oC
for their efficient operation, and regulatory mechanisms of
human body maintain this temperature by rejecting
appropriate amount of heat.
Human beings do not feel comfortable if some extra effort is
required by the body to reject this energy.
The air temperature, humidity and velocity at which human
body does not have to take any extra action, is called comfort
condition.

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Restaurants, theatres and other places of amusement require air-
conditioning for the comfort of patrons.
All places where, a large number of people assemble should have
sufficient supply of fresh air to dilute CO2 and body odors emitted by
persons.
In addition, people dissipate large quantities of heat that has to be
removed by air-conditioning for the comfort of persons.
These places have wide variation in air-conditioning load throughout the
day.
These have large number of persons, which add a lot of water vapor by
respiration and perspiration.
The food cooked and consumed also adds water vapor. This vapor has to
be removed by air-conditioning plant. Hence, these buildings have large
latent heat loads. Infiltration of warm outdoor is also large since the large
number of persons enter and leave the building leading to entry of outdoor
air with every door opening.
Ventilation requirement is also very large.

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 Applications of Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning
Industries
Air cleanliness
 Food and Beverage Industries
 Textile industries
 Electronics Industries
 Horticulture – transportation of Textile Industry
flowers, fruit...
Cold truck

Temperature and humidity control

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 Applications of Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning [Cont…]
Household and offices
 Refrigerators
 Air conditioning systems
Split AC for single rooms

Household refrigerator

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 Applications of Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning [Cont…]
Public places

halls, cinema,

malls…

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 Applications of Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning [Cont…]
Cold storage

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