The size effect of accumulator on the performance of system air conditioner

Abstract

Compressor reliability in an air-conditioning system can be reduced due to oil shortage phenomena; this is because at the compressor outlet, there is always a small amount of oil, which gets mixed with refrigerant gas, discharged from the compressor. If this oil amount keeps being small, the compressor can handle it, but if it is continuous, the compressor can be damaged by oil shortage phenomena. The accumulator is a device, installed beside the compressor, which recovers discharged oil from the compressor to bring it back to it, securing in this way the proper operating reliability of the compressor. In this study, experiments were carried out to analyze the effect of different accumulator sizes on the discharged oil level from the compressor. Several experiments were made with two types of accumulators at different operating conditions to obtain discharged oil levels from compressor and oil circulation rate (OCR) at each condition. Data obtained from the experiments is shown graphically and results were discussed.