Performance enhancement study of mobile air conditioning system using microchannel heat exchangers

In the present paper, two retrofitted compact and high efficient microchannel heat exchangers were proposed. The new microchannel heat exchangers have advantages in compactness (17.2% and 15.1% volume reduction for evaporator and condenser, respectively), weight (2.8% and 14.9% lighter for evaporator and condenser, respectively), heat transfer characteristics compared with the currently used heat exchangers in mobile air conditioning (MAC) industry. One enhanced and one baseline R134a MAC systems were established including the new microchannel heat exchangers and the traditional MAC heat exchangers, respectively. The system performances have been experimentally carried out under variable ambient conditions in psychrometric calorimeter test bench. The optimal system refrigerant charge amounts for both systems were tested and the results showed that the enhanced system with more compact heat exchangers could reduce system charge amount and the minimum effective charge amount was less than that of the baseline system. The enhanced system could supply more cooling capacity to car compartment under all test conditions because of higher performance heat exchangers. The coefficient of performance (COP) of the enhanced system was slightly lower than that of the baseline system under idle conditions but higher under all the other test conditions. Cooling capacity and COP of the enhanced system was increased by about 5% and 8% under high vehicle speed condition.