Performance of a Split Air Conditioner under Different

Refrigerant Pipe Length

Andriyanto Setyawan1,a), Windy H. Mitrakusuma1, b), and Hafid Najmudin2,c)

Author Affiliations
1
Department of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineering, Politeknik Negeri Bandung, Jl. Gegerkalong Hilir,
Ciwaruga, Bandung 40559, Indonesia
2
Balai Besar Bahan dan BarangTeknik, Bandung, Indonesia

Author Emails
a)
Corresponding author: andriyanto@polban.ac.id
b)
windyhm@polban.ac.id
c)
hafidnajmudin@gmail.com

Abstract. In general, the length of refrigerant pipe affects the performance of an air conditioner. Longer pipe will give
the higher pressure drop that decrease the performance of the AC unit. This paper reports the experimental results of a
split air conditioner installed with different length of refrigerant pipe. The experiment was accomplished with the
refrigerant pipe length of 5.5 m, 7.5 m, 10 m, and 15 m. In this test, the condenser and the evaporator of the air
conditioner were located at different chambers with temperature and humidity are controlled in accordance with ISO
5151:2017. From the experiment, it is obvious that the cooling capacity of the air conditioner decreases as the refrigerant
pipe length increases. For the pipe length of 5.5 m to 15 m, the cooling capacity decreases from 2352 W to 2281 W. The
power consumption increases from 708 W to 721 W. As a result, the energy efficiency ratio decreases from 3.32 to 3.16.

INTRODUCTION
Refrigeration and air conditioning can be found in almost all sectors in the human life. The popular applications
of refrigeration and air conditioning are for food preservation, food and beverages industry, medicine preservation,
gas liquefaction, process industry, industrial drying, transportation, pharmaceutical, semiconductor industry, and
human comfort. The vapor compression refrigeration is a common type of refrigeration and air conditioning
applications [1].
In an ideal vapor compression refrigeration cycle, the compression of refrigerant in a compressor is an isentropic
process. The condensation of refrigerant is an isobaric process, the expansion is adiabatic, and the evaporation of
refrigerant is isobaric. However, due to the pressure drop along the pipeline and heat exchanger, the cycle of a vapor
compression refrigeration system may no longer ideal [2]. Though a simulation, Sunardi et al. [3] reported a
significant drop in cooling capacity, heat rejection, and coefficient of performance (COP) due to pressure drop in the
condenser. The variation of suction and condensing pressure in a dual evaporator air conditioning system has also
been investigated [4]. In this study, the length of the suction and liquid pipelines was varied from 2 to 20 m.
Significant increase of COP, condensing pressure, and evaporating pressures were reported in this study.
The variation of pressure drop in a refrigeration system affects its operating conditions and performance. A
decrease of COP from about 4.15 to 2.7 has been reported for an air conditioning system using R32 [5]. The
presence of oil in refrigeration system also affects the pressure drop [6]. It was reported that the oil in the pipeline
increase the pressure drop for all range of refrigerant mass flux. Using refrigerant CO2, Subei and Schmitz [7]
reported the increase of pressure drop of interconnection pipe as a function of mass flow rate of refrigerant. Another
report on the effect of mass flow rate on the pressure drop has also been proposed by Fenko et al. [8]. Using vertical
dan horizontal evaporator, the reported the range of pressure drop up to 28 kPa of R134A and R600A in a 4.72 mm
pipe for low refrigerant mass flow rate.
In a refrigeration or air conditioning system, the pressure drop can also be found in the suction and liquid line. In
this study, the performance of an air conditioning unit with R32 was tested with various refrigerant pipe length. The
pressure drop along the suction and liquid line were calculated, and its effects on the performance of air conditioning
unit were elaborated.

METHODOLOGY
A 2.25 kW split air conditioner with refrigerant R32 and nominal cooling capacity of 2.25 kW was tested with
varied refrigerant pipe length for suction line and liquid line. Both lines were varied at length of 5.5 m, 7.5 m, 10 m,
and 15 m. Experiments in this research were carried out in a controlled psychrometric chamber. During the test, the
outdoor unit of the split AC was installed in a compartment maintained at 35C dry-bulb temperature and 24C wet-
bulb temperature. Meanwhile, the indoor unit was placed in a compartment maintained at 27C dry-bulb
temperature and 19C wet-bulb temperature. In the experiment, 32 parameters were measured to analyze the
performance of the air conditioner. The sketch of the test chamber is shown in Figure 1.

Heate r
r Heate

INDOOR OUTDOOR
Fan COMPARTMENT COMPARTMENT Fan
Tw,r Tr Indoor Tw,o To
Air flow unit
measurement
apparatus

Humidifier Humidifier

Outdoor unit

Cooling Cooling
coil coil

FIGURE 1. Sketch of test chamber.

The power consumption of the air conditioner was determined by the measurement of the current, voltage, and
power drawn by the unit. The cooling capacity was determined by the measurement of air volumetric flow rate
across the evaporator, dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature of the entering air to evaporator, and dry-bulb and wet-
bulb temperature of air leaving the evaporator. The capacity can be expressed as

𝑞𝑒 = 𝑚̇ (ℎ𝑒𝑎 − ℎ𝑙𝑎 ) (1)

where qe denotes the evaporator capacity or cooling capacity, 𝑚̇ expresses the mass flow rate of air across the
evaporator, and h is the enthalpy of air. Subscript ea and la denote the entering air to evaporator and leaving air from
evaporator. Given the dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature of air from the measurement, the air enthalpy can be
determined from a psychrometric chart.
To determine the mass flow rate, the volumetric flow rate of air at the evaporator outlet was measured. The mass
flow rate was then determined by

𝑚̇ = 𝜌𝑄 (2)
In this equation,  represents the air density and Q is the volumetric flow rate.
The energy efficiency ratio (EER) or coefficient of performance (COP) of the AC unit was determined by the
ratio of cooling capacity to the power consumption.
𝑞𝑒
𝐸𝐸𝑅 = (3)
𝑃𝑖

where Pi represents the input power to the air conditioning unit.

The different length of suction and liquid line pipe causes the varied pressure drop along the lines. The pressure
drop was determined form

𝐿𝜌𝑟 𝑣 2
∆𝑝 = 𝑓 (4)
2𝐷

where ∆𝑝 is the pressure drop, f is the friction factor, L is the length of the pipe, r is refrigerant density, v is
refrigerant velocity in the pipe, and D is the pipe diameter. Given the refrigerant flowrate in the pipe, the pressure
drop can be written as

𝐿𝜌𝑟 𝑄 2
∆𝑝 = 𝑓 ( ) (5)
2𝐷 𝐴

Q and A denote the volumetric flow rate and cross-sectional area of refrigerant pipe. Another expression of equation
(5) is

𝐿 4𝑚̇ 𝑟 2
∆𝑝 = 𝑓 ( 2) (6)
2𝜌𝑟 𝐷 𝜋𝐷

Here, 𝑚̇ 𝑟 represents the mass flow rate of refrigerant in the pipe.

To determine the friction factor (f), the following equation was used

0.25
𝑓=
𝜀/𝐷 5.74 2 (7)
[log10 ( + )]
3.7 𝑅𝑒 0.9

where  denotes the pipe roughness and Re is the Reynolds number of refrigerant.
The pressure drop in the pipe and the performance of the air conditioning unit are then analyzed. The effect of
pipe length on the performance of the air conditioning is then discussed. In addition, the effect of pipe length on the
pressure drop of refrigerant is also examined.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The calculated pressure drop in the suction and liquid pipeline are depicted in Figure 2 and 3. In Figure 2, the
variation of pressure drop in suction line as functions of pipe length and pipe diameter is shown. The experiment
was accomplished using suction pipe of 10.92 mm. The simulated pressure drop for pipe diameter of 8.00 mm and
13.84 mm are shown to examine the effect of pipe diameter on the pressure drop in the vapor line. As can be seen,
the pressure drop for the used pipe diameter of 10.92 mm is in the range of 6.5 kPa to 17.8 kPa. Using larger pipe
diameter (13.84 mm), the pressure drop is reduced to the range of 2.1 to 5.6 kPa. This lower pressure is mostly
caused by the lower friction loss as the refrigerant travels at the lower velocity in the pipe. On the other hand, higher
pressure drop (in the order of 30.4 to 82.9 kPa) is resulted when the pipe diameter was reduced to 8.00 mm. In this
case, the refrigerant flows with the higher velocity, resulting in the higher friction loss. For a comparison,
Constantino and Kanizawa [2] reported the pressure drop in evaporator in the order of 6 kPa for their experiment
using R600a and R134a. Another refrigerant, however, provide lower ranges of pressure drop.
Calculation of pressure drop for liquid line was carried out for a single pipe diameter of 8.00 mm. The shortest
liquid line gives the pressure drop of 1.4 kPa. The pressure drop increases to 1.8 and 2.5 kPa when the pipe length
increases to 7.5 and 10 m, respectively. For pipe length of 15 m, the pressure drop increases to 3.7 kPa. Figure 3
shows the effect of liquid line pipe length on the pressure drop. In comparison to that of suction line, the liquid line
gives the lower pressure drop. This probably caused by the lower refrigerant velocity in the liquid line. With the
higher density, refrigerant travels with an estimated velocity of 0.43 m/s. Meanwhile, for the same pipe diameter,
refrigerant flows in the suction line with an estimated velocity of 14.4 m/s.

100

80
Pressure drop (kPa)

60

40

20

0
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Pipe length (m)
D = 8.00 mm D = 10.92 mm D = 13.84 mm

FIGURE 2. Pressure drop of suction line. In this experiment, suction pipe of 10.92 mm diameter was used.

4
Pressure drop (kPa)

0
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Pipe length (m)

FIGURE 3. Pressure drop of liquid line. In this experiment, liquid line pipe of 8.00 mm diameter was used.

To analyze the performance of the air conditioning unit, the current, voltage, and power consumption of the unit
was measured for different pipe length. During the experiment, the length of pipeline for both suction and liquid
were the same. As depicted in Figure 4, the power consumption of the air conditioning unit is somewhat unchanged.
Only slight difference of power consumption was found for different pipe length. Instead of increasing, the
measured input power slightly increases from 708.1 to 721.5 Watts with the increase of pipe length from 5.5 to 15
m. The total change of power consumption is only 1.9% for a 9.5-m addition of pipe length. From simulation, the
range of power consumption decreases from 723 to 725 Watts. Here, the simulation has a good accordance with the
measurement result with an error of about 1.1%.

800

750

Input power (Watt)

700

650

600

550 Measured
Calculated
500
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Pipe length (m)
FIGURE 4. Effect of pipe length on the power drawn by the AC unit.

The effect of the refrigerant pipe length on the cooling capacity is presented in Figure 5. From the measurement,
the range of cooling capacity is 2281 to 2352 Watts. It means that 9.5 m increase of pipe length causes the decrease
of cooling capacity by only 3.1%. By simulation, the cooling capacity is in the range of 2258 to 2317 Watts. In other
words, a 9.5-m increase of pipe length decreases the cooling capacity by 2.6%. The mean average error between the
measurement and simulation is 1.4% It indicates a good accordance between the simulation and the measurement
results.

2400

2350
Cooling capacity (Watt)

2300

2250

2200

2150

2100
Measured
2050 Calculated
2000
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Pipe length (m)
FIGURE 5. Effect of pipe length on the cooling capacity of the AC unit.

The COP of the air conditioning unit is calculated by dividing the cooling capacity with the power consumption.
Using refrigerant pipe length of 5.5 m, the COP was found to be 3.32. The COP drops to 3.26, 3.25, and 3.16 when
the pipe length increases to 7.5, 10, and 15 m, respectively. In other words, 9.5 m increase of pipe length decreases
the COP by about 5.1%. From the simulation, the COP drops from 3.20 to 3.12 for the same increase of pipe length.
It indicates that the addition of pipe length of 9.5 m decreases the COP by 2.33%. Again, the simulation has a good
agreement with the measurement results with an average error of 2.6%. As a comparison, Arora et al (2008) [9]
reported a decrease of COP from about 3.75 to 3.59 for the simulation using R404A for the same range of pressure
drop. Here, the COP was reduced by 4.5%.
 4.00

3.50

EER
3.00

2.50
Measured
Calculated
2.00
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Pipe length (m)
FIGURE 6. Effect of pipe length on the EER.

CONCLUSION
Experiment and simulation of the variation of refrigerant pipe length from 5.5 m to 15 m has been accomplished
in a 2.25 kW air conditioning unit with R32. In this study, the pressure drop in the suction line with a diameter of
10.92 mm is found to be higher than that of the liquid line with a diameter of 8.00 mm. The higher refrigerant
velocity in the suction line can be the reason of the higher pressure drop.
As the refrigerant pipe increases, the cooling capacity of the tested unit decreases. A change of pipe length from
5.5 to 15 m results in the reduction of cooling capacity from 2317 to 2258 Watts or decreases by 3.1%. The power
consumption of the air conditioning unit was measured to be almost constant. Only 1.9% decrease of power
consumption was recorded for the change of pipe length from 5.5 to 15 m. It results in the decrease of COP by about
5.1% from 3.32 to 3.16.

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