Performance of vapor compression refrigeration system using nanoparticles – based mineral oil lubricant

Abstract

In general, mineral oil and polyester oil are used as lubricants in a refrigeration system compressor. The present work focuses mainly on the mineral oil based lubricant based on MWCNT nanoparticles. The different characterization of the multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) was performed using different methods such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), which will result in size, structure and morphology of the CNT nanoparticle. First prepare the Nano-lubricants by adding nanoparticles in mineral oil with different concentrations of 0.05, 0.075 and 0.1wt% with the help of an ultrasonicator which will give the homogeneous mixture of Nanolubricant. Nanoparticles mixed with mineral oil used in a refrigeration system work safely and normally. The experiment were conducted on refrigeration system for different concentration, namely 0.05, 0.075 and 0.1wt% which will mixed with mineral oil and without nanoparticles in mineral oil. The result shows that 0.1wt% Nanolubricant which will give higher improvement in heat transfer efficiency and increase in the Coefficient of Performance (COP) by 37%. And energy savings is 9.6%.