Introduction to refrigeration

Introduction:
For specific applications, efficiencies of both living and non-living beings depend to a great
extent on the physical environment. The nature keeps conditions in the physical environment in
the dynamic state ranging from one extreme to the other.
Temperature, humidity, pressure and air motion are some of the important environment variables
that at any location keep changing throughout the year.
Adaptation to these many a times unpredictable variations is not possible and thus working
efficiently is not feasible either for the living beings or the non- living ones.
Thusfor any specific purpose, control of the environment is essential. Refrigeration is the subject
which deals with the techniques to control the environments of the living and non-living subjects
and thus provide them comforts to enable them to perform better and have longer lives.
Definition of refrigeration:
• Refrigeration can be defined as the process of achieving and maintaining a temperature below
that of the surrounding temperature, with the aim of cooling some product or space to the
required temperature.
• Or it is defined as the process of extracting heat from a lower-temperature heat
source, substance, or cooling medium and transferring it to a higher temperature heat sink,
atmospheric air, or surface water.
• Generally refrigeration is the science of moving heat from low temperature to
high temperature.
• According to 2 nd law of Tds this process can only be performed with the aid of
some external work, i.e. refrigerator
Refrigeration system
• It is a combination of components, equipment, and piping, connected in a sequential order to
produce the refrigeration effect. It is a device used to produce an output.
Applications of Refrigeration
1. Food processing, preservation and distribution (Storage of Raw Fruits and
Vegetables, Icing of fish, Meat and poultry, Dairy Products (milk, butter, buttermilk and i ce
cream), Beverages, Candy).
2. Chemical and process industries
• Separation of gases:- In petrochemical plant, temperatures as low as –150o C 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 themixtures of hydrocarbon. Propane is
used as refrigerant in many of these plants.
• Condensation of Gases: some gases that are produced synthetically, are condensed to liquid
state by cooling, so that these can be easily stored andtransported in liquid state. For example, in
synthetic ammonia plant, ammonia is condensed at –10 to 10o C before filling in the cylinders,
storage and shipment. This low temperature requires refrigeration.
• Dehumidification of air. Low humidity air is required in many pharmaceutical industries. It is
also required for air liquefaction plants.
• Solidification of Solute, for separation of a substance or pollutant or impurity from liquid
mixture, Cooling for preservation).
3.Special applications
• Cold treatment of metals (w/h increase hardness and wear resistance of carburized)
• Medical:- Blood plasma and antibiotics are manufactured by freeze-drying process where
water is made to sublime at low pressure and low temperature.
• Ice Skating Rinks:- Due to the advent of artificial refrigeration, sports like ice hockey and
skating do not have to depend upon freezing weather.
• 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.