Working Principle

1. the Basic Principle

The basic principle of refrigeration is simple. You simply pass a colder liquid continuously around the object that is to be cooled. This will take heat from the object. In the example shown, a cold liquid is passed over an apple, which is to be cooled. Due to the temperature difference, the apple loses heat to the refrigerant liquid. The refrigerant in turn is heated due to heat absorption from the apple.

2.component of refrigerator and working

Fig.2 An inside view of a refrigerator

It has 4 main components: compressor, condenser, evaporator, and throttling device. Of these components, the throttling device is the one that is responsible for the production of the cold liquid. So we will first analyze the throttling device in a detailed way and move on to the other components.

3.Throttling Device

The throttling device obstructs the flow of liquid; cold liquid is produced with the help of this device. In this case, the throttling device is a capillary tube. The capillary tube has an approximate length of 2 m and an inside diameter of around 0.6 mm, so it offers considerable resistance to the flow.

Fig.3 A Capillary tube: This results in sudden drop in pressure and temperature

For effective throttling at the inlet, the refrigerant should be a high-pressure liquid. The throttling device restricts the flow, which causes a tremendous pressure drop. Due to the drop in pressure, the boiling point of the refrigerant is lowered, and it starts to evaporate. The heat required for evaporation comes from the refrigerant itself, so it loses heat, and its temperature drops. If you check the temperature across the throttling device, you will notice this drop.

It is wrong to say that the throttling is a process. We know only the end points of throttling, that is, the states before and after throttling. We don’t know the states in between, since this is a highly irreversible change. So it would be correct to call throttling a phenomenon rather than a process.

Basic principle of working!