COMPUTATIONAL TOOL FOR EXPERIMENTAL REFRIGERATION SYSTEM ANALYSIS USING SPREADSHEETS

Abstract

This paper presents a spreadsheet application for data filtering and energy analysis, which has applications in research and experimental evaluation of the energetic performance of alternative refrigerants. Experimental vapor compression systems generate a large amount of data, which is stored in text files of variable size. Text files contain different parameters such as: temperature, pressure, mass flow rate and power consumption, measured at the inlet and outlet of each component of the test bench. This computational tool processes information using spreadsheet functions and programming in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) capabilities as well as the connection with the REFPROP dynamic libraries for thermophysical properties of refrigerants. The resulting application is user friendly (for engineering students, researchers, etc.), even without VBA programming and interaction of dynamic libraries of REFPROP knowledge.