This paper considers the influence of internal heat exchanger and capillary tube on the efficiency of small refrigeration system using eco-friendly refrigerants such as R290, R600a, R1270, and R717. A refrigeration system using such internal heat exchanger and capillary tube may improve performance, but may degrade performance. Therefore, this paper used a mathematical model in a normal state to understand performance characteristics as to what change occurs when internal heat exchanger and capillary tube are attached to eco-friendly refrigerant based on R134a. In addition, the effects of operating conditions such as refrigerant flow rate, evaporation temperature, condensation temperature, subcooling degree internal heat exchanger length and capillary tube length were analyzed. The result showed that the evaporation temperature, condensation temperature, subcooling degree, internal heat exchanger length and capillary tube length had an effect on the refrigeration capacity and compression power. Therefore, it is necessary to design a refrigeration cycle using an eco-friendly refrigerant by grasping these effects in detail.

This paper focuses on the simulation of refrigeration cycle equipped with the adiabatic capillary tube, which is widely used in small vapor compression refrigeration systems. The present simulation is based on fundamental conservation equations of mass, energy and momentum. These equations are solved through an iterative process. The adiabatic capillary tube model is based on homogeneous flow model. This model is used to understand the natural refrigerants flow behavior inside the adiabatic capillary tube. Transport properties and thermodynamic of natural refrigerants are calculated by using EES(Engineering Equation Solver) program. The operating factors considered in this paper include condensation temperature, evaporation temperature, inner diameter tube and sub-cooling degree of the adiabatic capillary tube. Our simulation results are summarized as follows: as the size of the inner diameter tube increases, the pressure drop in the capillary tube decreases while the length of the capillary tube increases. We found that R-290 decreases by 20-22% on average, and R-600a significantly decreases below 50%, while R-1270 increases 17-19% on average, compared to R-134a.

To use effectively the solar energy in greenhouse heating, a high performance solar collector should be developed. And then the size of the solar collector and thermal storage tank should be determined through the calculation of heating load. The solar collector must be set in the optimum tilt angle and direction to take daily solar radiation maximally, and the flow rate of heat transfer fluid through the solar collector should be kept in the optimum range. In this research, the performance tests of a capillary tube solar collector were performed to determine the optimum water flow rate and the results summarized as follows. 1. The regressive equations for efficiency estimations of the capillary tube solar collector in the open loop were modeled in the water flow rate of 700-l,000 l/hr. 2. The optimum water flow rate of the solar collector was estimated by the second order polynomial regression and the maximum efficiency was 80% at the water flow rate of 850 l/hr. 3. The solar thermal storage system consisted of a capillary tube solar collector and a water storage tank was tested at the water flow rate of 850 l/hr in the closed loop, and obtained the solar thermal storage efficiency of 55.2%. 4. As the capillary tube solar collector engaged in this experiment was made of non-corrosive polyolefin tubes, its weight was as light as 1/30 of the flat plate solar collector made of copper tubes. Therefore it was considered to be suitable for the greenhouse heating system.