FORCO2REFRIGERATIONSYSTEMS.PDFVIP

A TWIN SCREW COMBINED COMPRESSOR AND EXPANDER FOR CO REFRIGERATION SYSTEMS 2 Nikola Stosic, Ian K. Smith and Ahmed Kovacevic Centre for Positive Displacement Compressor Technology City University, London, EC1V 0HB, U.K. Tel +44 20 7040 8925, Fax +44 20 7040 8566 e-mail: n.stosic@city.ac.uk ABSTRACT Recent interest in natural refrigerants has created a new impetus for studies of CO as a working fluid in 2 vapour compression systems for refrigeration and air conditioning. Two major drawbacks to its use are the very high pressure differences required across the compressor and the large efficiency losses associated with the throttling process. To overcome the throttle losses, a number of proposals have been made for various types of positive displacement machine, mainly of the vane type, which combine compression with some recovery of work from the expansion process. However, how well they operate with high pressure differences across the vanes has not been confirmed. For many years, the authors have been investigating the use of twin screw machines to fulfil both the expansion and compression processes when using more conventional halocarbon refrigerants. These have many potential advantages over other types of positive displacement machine. Unfortunately, when applied to CO the