Energy Consumption Analysis Of A Refrigerator-Freezer Employing A Sensor Inside A Fluid With High Thermal Capacity
Fernando Neves Quintino dos Santos1; Júlio César Bragança da Matta Machado,1; Luiz Machado1; Antônio Augusto Torres Maia1
1 Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-1666
Resumo
The refrigerator is an important household appliance due to its popularity and the significant participation in the domestic energy consumption. In most of domestic refrigerators, the temperature of the air inside is employed as parameter in the on/off controller. Though, since the air temperature response is generally faster than the response of the other items stored inside the refrigerator, some on/off cycles may be unnecessary. This can lead to an increase in the energy consumption and make the products to be stored in a temperature that is not suitable. In this work it is proposed a digital on/off controller with a physical filter in the form of a liquid of high thermal capacity to adjust the internal temperature of a domestic refrigerator. The temperature used as parameter to the control system was that of ethylene glycol, a fluid with higher thermal capacity than the air, as an attempt to better represent the temperature of the items stored. Using the filter it was achieved a 30% reduction in the number of cycles while it was followed by a reduction in energy consumptions of 11.05% and 10.79% with the refrigerator empty and loaded respectively.
Palavras-chave: household refrigerator; on/off control; energy consumption; Digital Controller; temperature control