Experimental study on the refrigerators with refrigerant dimethyl ether

The performances of the refrigeration cycle of dimethyl ether (DME) used as a refrigerant for refrigerators were theoretically calculated and analyzed. The experimental study on the main performances of refrigerator refrigeration cycle was done by using DME substituting for CFC12 under the condition of unchanged original refrigerator construction. The experimental results indicate that the performances of the refrigerator using DME or CFC12 are nearly the same, and the optimal charge amount of DME in BCD-218 refrigerator is 54 g, the energy consumption per day of DME is 1.087 kW·h which is only 84.4% of that of CFC12. Therefore the refrigeration performance of refrigerator using DME can still meet the national standard requirement under the condition of its optimum charge amount.