Comparison of Subcooling Effect of Water as a Refrigerant With the Current Refrigerants

The performance comparison of water as a refrigerant (R718) with some prevailing refrigerants including R717, R290, R134a, R12, R22, and R152a is presented. A computer program simulating an actual vapor compression refrigeration cycle including subcooling was developed to calculate the coefficient of performances (COPs) for the different refrigerants. Evaporator temperatures above which water yields a better COP over the other refrigerants are investigated for subcooling case. The effect of degree of subcooling on the COPs is elaborated. For most of the refrigerants (R290, R134a, R12, R22, and R152a) the COP increases by around one percent (1%) per one Kelvin (1K) subcooling, while the COP for R718 and R717 increases by around 0.2 % and 0.5 % per one Kelvin (1K) subcooling. At constant evaporator temperature, increasing the degree of subcooling results in decrease of the relative COP gain of R718. R718 gives the highest relative COP increase at constant condenser temperature and polytropic efficiency. The effect of polytropic efficiency on the performance is also investigated. It is observed that the evaporator temperature range at which R718 presents a better COP than other refrigerants increases with increasing values of polytropic compressor efficiency if the degree of subcooling is kept constant.