Increasing the Efficiency of a Vapour Compression Refrigerating Machine through Adiabatic Air Cooling

The issue of reducing energy consumption and the negative impact on the environment caused by vapour-compression refrig-erating machines through the use of adiabatic air cooling technologies is considered in the paper. The climatic features of the use of adiabatic air cooling are determined using the example of four cities of Ukraine (Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa). It is shown that the maximum cooling effect is observed in Kharkiv, although in terms of maximum temperatures and the duration of the warm period, this city is 6.3% inferior to Odesa. However, due to low relative humidity, the cooling efficiency was 5.4% higher. To conduct a comparative study of the effectiveness of the use of adiabatic technologies, field tests were con-ducted on two identical refrigerating units working under the same operating conditions, one of which was additionally equipped with an evaporative cooling system. A monitoring system, which was installed on both the original and the modern-ized refrigerating units, was developed to collect, accumulate and pre-process experimental data. It was determined that when using adiabatic technologies, the mass flow rate of the refrigerant is reduced compared to the original vapour-compression machine while ensuring the same cooling capacity, which in turn leads to a decrease in the load on the compressor. In turn, this leads to a decrease in the rotation frequency of the compressor electric motor, which resulted in a decrease in energy consumption by 25–28 % for the considered type of refrigerating units.