Study on Reduction of Energy Consumption of Household Refrigerators-Freezers

In the last quarter of the century, a substantial amount of research work has been conducted on optimization of energy consumption by refrigeration systems and on proper design and construction of household refrigerator-freezers. The importance of such energy optimization schemes stems from the environmental impacts of Freon (R-12) used as the working refrigerant in household refrigerator – freezers as well as the enormous energy consumed by such appliances. International regulations for the replacement of Ozone-depleting refrigerants, such as the Montreal Protocol, as well as the Iranian regulations regarding reduced energy consumption of energy consuming products have motivated research on the optimum design of household refrigerator-freezers. In this paper, research works aimed at analytical modeling and also the experimental works conducted to determine design methods of energy efficient refrigerator- freezers in Iran will be presented. Using the numerical method developed for this purpose, a parametric analysis of the components of a refrigerator-freezer manufactured in Iran will be presented and the reduced energy consumption by the selected appliance and its increased efficiency will be discussed. The influence of replacing R-12 with its substitute refrigerant (R-134a) on the energy consumption and efficiency of the typical refrigerator is also presented.