Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Liquid Flooded Compression in Scroll Compressors

Adding liquid to the working fluid in scroll compressors can allow for a working process that approaches isothermal compression. When liquid flooding and regeneration is applied to refrigeration and heat pump systems, simple cycle modeling predicts that for systems that operate at very large temperature lifts, the increase in system coefficient of performance can be greater than 50%. In order to better understand the liquid-flooded working process, a detailed scroll compressor model has been developed which comprises a geometric model and an overall compressor model. The geometric model includes numerically validated analytic solutions for all geometric parameters, including force terms, for constant wall thickness scroll wraps that can have multiple pairs of compression chambers. The overall model includes a frictionally-corrected isentropic nozzle leakage model, adaptive Runge-Kutta solver for the system of differential equations, and numerically efficient thermodynamic and transport property routines. The compressor model has been validated against testing conducted on the Liquid-Flooded Ericsson Cycle for oil mass fractions as high as 92% oil by mass with error in predictions of shaft power and mass flow less than 3%. Optimization of the compressor performance with flooding for several applications is carried out, and with optimization, overall isentropic efficiencies over 75% are predicted for configurations with large amounts of oil flooding. Further testing on a refrigerant R410A vapor injected compressor with oil injection has shown that the performance with oil injection improves monotonically with the oil injection rate as long as the oil is cooled prior to injection.