1.

1 The meaning of air conditioning

Full air conditioning implies the automatic control of an atmospheric environment either
for the comfort of human beings or animals or for the proper performance of some industrial
or scientific process. The adjective 'full' demands that the purity, movement, temperature
and relative humidity of the air be controlled, within the limits imposed by the design
specification. (It is possible that, for certain applications, the pressure of the air in the
environment may also have to be controlled.) Air conditioning is often misused as a term
and is loosely and wrongly adopted to describe a system of simple ventilation. It is really
correct to talk of air conditioning only when a cooling and dehumidification function is
intended, in addition to other aims. This means that air conditioning is always associated
with refrigeration and it accounts for the comparatively high cost of air conditioning.
Refrigeration plant is precision-built machinery and is the major item of cost in an air
conditioning installation, thus the expense of air conditioning a building is some four times
greater than that of only heating it. Full control over relative humidity is not always
exercised, hence for this reason a good deal of partial air conditioning is carded out; it is
still referred to as air conditioning because it does contain refrigeration plant and is therefore
capable of cooling and dehumidifying.
The ability to counter sensible and latent heat gains is, then, the essential feature of an
air conditioning system and, by common usage, the term 'air conditioning' means that
refrigeration is involved.
1.2 Comfort conditioning
Human beings are born into a hostile environment, but the degree of hostility varies with
the season of the year and with the geographical locality. This suggests that the arguments
for air conditioning might be based solely on climatic considerations, but although these
may be valid in tropical and subtropical areas, they are not for temperate climates with
industrialized social structures and rising standards of living.
Briefly, air conditioning is necessary for the following reasons. Heat gains from sunlight,
electric lighting and business machines, in particular, may cause unpleasantly high
temperatures in rooms, unless windows are opened. If windows are opened, then even
moderate wind speeds cause excessive draughts, becoming worse on the upper floors of
tall buildings. Further, if windows are opened, noise and dirt enter and are objectionable,
becoming worse on the lower floors of buildings, particularly in urban districts and industrial
2 The need for air conditioning
areas. In any case, the relief provided by natural airflow through open windows is only
effective for a depth of about 6 meters inward from the glazing. It follows that the inner
areas of deep buildings will not really benefit at all from opened windows. Coupled with
the need for high intensity continuous electric lighting in these core areas, the lack of
adequate ventilation means a good deal of discomfort for the occupants. Mechanical ventilation
without refrigeration is only a partial solution. It is true that it provides a controlled and
uniform means of air distribution, in place of the unsatisfactory results obtained with
opened windows (the vagaries of wind and stack effect, again particularly with tall buildings,
produce discontinuous natural ventilation), but tolerable internal temperatures will prevail
only during winter months. For much of the spring and autumn, as well as the summer,
the internal room temperature will be several degrees higher than that outside, and it
will be necessary to open windows in order to augment the mechanical ventilation. See
chapter 16.
The design specification for a comfort conditioning system is intended to be the framework
for providing a comfortable environment for human beings throughout the year, in the
presence of sensible heat gains in summer and sensible heat losses in winter. Dehumidification
would be achieved in summer but the relative humidity in the conditioned space would be
allowed to diminish as winter approached. There are two reasons why this is acceptable:
first, human beings are comfortable within a fairly large range of humilities, from about
65 per cent to about 20 per cent and, secondly, if single glazing is used it will cause the
inner surfaces of windows to stream with condensed moisture if it is attempted to maintain
too high a humidity in winter.
The major market for air conditioning is to deal with office blocks in urban areas.
Increasing land prices have led to the construction of deep-plan, high-rise buildings that
had to be air conditioned and developers found that these could command an increase in
rent that would more than pay for the capital depreciation and running cost of the air
Conditioning systems installed.
Thus, a system might be specified as capable of maintaining an internal condition of
22~ dry-bulb, with 50 per cent saturation, in the presence of an external summer state of
28~ dry-bulb, with 20~ wet-bulb, declining to an inside condition of 20~ dry-bulb,
with an unspecified relative humidity, in the presence of an external state of-2~ saturated
in winter.
The essential feature of comfort conditioning is that it aims to produce an environment
which is comfortable to the majority of the occupants. The ultimate in comfort can never
be achieved, but the use of individual automatic control for individual rooms helps
considerably in satisfying most people and is essential.
1.3 Industrial conditioning
Here the picture is quite different. An industrial or scientific process may, perhaps, be
performed properly only if it is carried out in an environment that has values of temperature
and humidity lying within well defined limits. A departure from these limits may spoil the
work being done. It follows that a choice of the inside design condition is not based on a
statistical survey of the feelings of human beings but on a clearly defined statement of what
is wanted.
Thus, a system might be specified to hold 21~ + 0.5~ with 50 per cent saturation
+2 _89per cent, provided that the outside state lay between 29.5~ dry-bulb, with 21 ~ wetbulb
a n d - 4~ saturated.

Vapour Compression Refrigeration Systems

As mentioned, vapour compression refrigeration systems are the most
commonly used among all refrigeration systems. As the name implies, these
systems belong to the general class of vapour cycles, wherein the working fluid
(refrigerant) undergoes phase change at least during one process. In a vapour
compression refrigeration system, refrigeration is obtained as the refrigerant
evaporates at low temperatures. The input to the system is in the form of
mechanical energy required to run the compressor. Hence these systems are
also called as mechanical refrigeration systems. Vapour compression
refrigeration systems are available to suit almost all applications with the
refrigeration capacities ranging from few Watts to few megawatts. A wide
variety of refrigerants can be used in these systems to suit different
applications, capacities etc. The actual vapour compression cycle is based on
Evans-Perkins cycle, which is also called as reverse Rankine cycle. Before the
actual cycle is discussed and analyzed, it is essential to find the upper limit of
performance of vapour compression cycles. This limit is set by a completely
reversible cycle.
Figure 10.5 shows the schematic of a standard, saturated, single stage (SSS) vapour compression
refrigeration system and the operating cycle on a T s diagram. As shown in the figure the standard
single stage, saturated vapour compression refrigeration system consists of the following four
processes:
Process 1-2: Isentropic compression of saturated vapour in compressor
Process 2-3: Isobaric heat rejection in condenser
Process 3-4: Isenthalpic expansion of saturated liquid in expansion device
Process 4-1: Isobaric heat extraction in the evaporator
By comparing with Carnot cycle, it can be seen that the standard vapour
compression refrigeration cycle introduces two irreversibilities: 1) Irreversibility
due to non-isothermal heat rejection (process 2-3) and 2) Irreversibility due to
isenthalpic throttling (process 3-4). As a result, one would expect the theoretical
COP of standard cycle to be smaller than that of a Carnot system for the same
heat source and sink temperatures. Due to these irreversibilities, the cooling
effect reduces and work input increases, thus reducing the system COP. This
can be explained easily with the help of the cycle diagrams on T s charts. Figure
10.6(a) shows comparison between Carnot and standard VCRS in terms of
refrigeration effect.

Figure 1.3 shows the basic components of a vapour compression refrigeration system. As shown in
the figure the basic system consists of an evaporator, compressor, condenser and an expansion valve.
The refrigeration effect is obtained in the cold region as heat is extracted by the vaporization of
refrigerant in the evaporator. The refrigerant vapour from the evaporator is compressed in the
compressor to a high pressure at which its saturation temperature is greater than the ambient or any
other heat sink. Hence when the high pressure, high temperature refrigerant flows through the
condenser, condensation of the vapour into liquid takes place by heat rejection to the heat sink. To
complete the cycle, the high pressure liquid is made to flow through an expansion valve. In the
expansion valve the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant decrease. This low pressure and low
temperature refrigerant vapour evaporates in the evaporator taking heat from the cold region. It
should be observed that the system operates on a closed cycle. The system requires input in the form
of mechanical work. It extracts heat from a cold space and rejects heat to a high temperature heat
sink.
A refrigeration system can also be used as a heat pump, in which the useful output is the high
temperature heat rejected at the condenser. Alternatively, a refrigeration system can be used for
providing cooling in summer and heating in winter. Such systems have been built and are available
now.