A study of a green coupled vane compressor

• Main Author: Soh, Jun Hui
• Other Authors: Ooi Kim Tiow
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150889
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Every year, large quantities of metals such as steel are consumed in the manufacturing process of the compressors and there is an increasing pressure to reduce the materials usage for more sustainable environmental impact. Positive displacement rotary compressors are used in a variety of applications including air conditioning, refrigeration, and heating applications. A variant of the rotary vane compressor is the Coupled Vane Compressor (CVC), which allows for one of the highest reductions in material used along with achieving excellent compactness in size and will be the compressor of interest in this study. The CVC comprised of two vanes coupled together that cuts diametrically through the rotor. The design principle of the CVC suggests that the rotor to be similar dimensions as the motor shaft for ideal operation. Pradeep, the co-inventor of the coupled vane compressor, created a simulation program in Fortran that included the mathematical models built to predict CVC output. The CVC prototype was designed with an 80 cm3 maximum suction chamber capacity. The experimental investigation has been carried out by varying the different types of fluids used and the operating condition of AHRI 540 standards for the year of 2020 and 2015 to enable comparison in their performance in terms of Coefficient of Performance, Power consumption, and Isentropic efficiency to determine the ideal parameters and conditions for the CVC.