EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE OF AIR-CONDITIONING COMPRESSOR DUE TO AL2O3 NANOPARTICLES IN LUBRICATING OIL

Nanoparticles are being widely used in recent years, due to their advantages. Addition of nanoparticles leads to significant change in thermal properties of a fluid. A new engineering medium, called nanofluid attracted a wide range of researchers on many cooling processes in engineering applications, which are prepared by dispersing nanoparticles or nanotubes in a host fluid. Recently, many researchers used nanoparticles in refrigeration and air conditioning systems, because of significant improvement in heat transfer capability to enhance the efficiency of refrigeration and air conditioning systems. In this paper, the thermal conductivities of Al2O3 and TiO2 nanofluids at different volume concentrations were calculated theoretically, and reported that both nanofluids thermal conductivities increases with increase in particle volume concentration, and TiO2 nanofluids has grater thermal conductivity over Al2O3 nanofluids. The performance test of domestic air conditioning rotary compressor was done experimentally, by using Al2O3 nanoparticles combined with mineral based lubricating oil (Suniso-4gs oil) and reported that increase in EER is just 0.13% and COP is improved up to 3.8% when Al2O3 Nanolubricant is replaced with lubricating oil. So, further experimentation is required with higher concentrations of nanoparticles with smaller sizes of Nano particles, and suitable combinations of nanoparticles are also needed. The refrigerant used in this process is R410a, which is sold under the trademark names of Suva 410a, Forane 410a, Puron, Ecofluor R410, Genetron R410a, AZ-20, which is a zeotropic but near azeotropic mixture of difluoromethane (CH2F2, called R-32) and pentafluoroethane (CHF2CF3, called R-125), also said to be a high pressure compressors refrigerant.