Analysis of energy saving performance for household refrigerator with thermal storage of condenser and evaporator

Highlights: • A novel refrigerator with both HSC and CSE is proposed. • The operational characteristics of novel refrigerator is analyzed. • The comparison of CSE, HSC and DES refrigerators is analyzed. • DES refrigerator has a largest off-time to on-time ratio of 4.3. • DES refrigerator has the best electrical energy saving performance (32%). - Abstract: The heat transfer performances of evaporators and condensers significantly affect the efficiency of household refrigerators. For enhancing heat transfer of the condensers and evaporators, a novel dual energy storage (DES) refrigerator with both heat storage condenser (HSC) and cold storage evaporator (CSE) is proposed. The performance comparison of three kinds of energy storage refrigerators: HSC refrigerator, CSE refrigerator and DES refrigerator is analyzed by establishing dynamic simulation models. According to the simulation results, the DES refrigerator combines the advantage of HSC refrigerator and CSE refrigerator, it has more balanced operational cycle and higher evaporation pressure and temperature. The DES refrigerator shows a best energy saving performance among the three energy storage refrigerators with largest off-time to on-time ratio of 4.3 and the electrical consumption saving can reach 32%, which is greater than the sum (28%) of the other two kinds of energy storage refrigerators.