Computational tool for experimental  refrigeration system analysis using  spreadsheets

Authors

This paper presents a spreadsheet application for data fil

tering and energy analysis, which has applications in research

and experimental evaluation of the energetic performance of

alternative refrigerants. Experimental vapor compression sys

tem (refrigeration system) generate a large amount of data,

which is stored in text files of variable size. Text files contain

different parameters such as: temperature, pressure, mass flow

rate and power consumption, measured at the inlet and out

let of each component of the test bench. This computational

tool processes information using spreadsheet functions and

programming in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) capa

bilities as well as the connection with the REFPROP dynamic

libraries for thermophysical properties of refrigerants. The re

sulting application is user friendly (for engineering students,

researchers, etc.), even without VBA programming and inter

action of dynamic libraries of REFPROP knowledge by the

user.