Detecting condenser faults in commercial refrigeration systems

Fault detection in commercial refrigeration systems is an important topic due to both economic and food safety reasons. If faults can be detected and diagnosed before the system drifts outside the specified operational envelope, service costs can be reduced and in extreme cases the costly discarding of food products can be avoided. In the situations where the operational requirements can be met with a fault present, the system will operate with a higher energy consumption increasing the cost of operation. The objective of this study is to develop a robust method for detecting condenser faults in commercial refrigeration systems under the wide operational conditions that they are exposed to. The approach described uses a non-linear parity equation comparing the heat transfer rates of the air and the refrigerant of the condenser. The paper presents the detection method and discusses the application of the method on experimental results obtained on a Danish supermarket.