Validação de um equipamento experimental para a determinação da vazão de nitrogênio em tubos capilares de refrigeração

Abstract

The capillary tube is the most used expansion device in small refrigeration systems, including air conditioners and household refrigerators. Considering this context, the study of capillary tube is very important to optimize it’s use application in this kind of refrigeration systems, once the capillary tube has a direct impact on the system's coefficient of performance. In this work, the dry nitrogen flow was measured in capillary tubes using several geometries, totalizing 450 experiments, all of them standardized with the "ASHRAE 28", which is normally used for this kind of experiment. It was readjusted an existing empirical correlation in the literature, using response surface method (RMS) combined with a Genetic Algorithm (GA), which is an design of experiments combined with an optimization process to obtain best results and to check the quality of the experiment.