The Refrigeration Engineering Laboratory is equipped with several rigs and test facilities for doing research within liquefied gas technology:
- High accuracy calorimeter to measure enthalpy of complex gas mixtures at low temp.
- Special test rigs rig to measure heat transfer and pressure drop in evaporating and condensing gas mixtures in gas liquefaction plants
- Laboratory prototype plant to investigate new patented process for small scale liquefaction of natural gas – 2000 kg/hrs
- Prototype plant to study new process for production of liquid hydrogen
- Own developed Large Scale Hot-Plate Apparatus (area 2 x 3 m) to study the thermal behaviour of insulation systems designed for liquefied natural gas
Within refrigeration and heat pumps using CO 2 as refrigerant , the following rigs are worth to mention:
- Laboratory prototype plants to test out solutions and equipment for heat pump water heaters and heat pump/air-conditioning plants for cars.
- Test rigs for measuring heat transfer efficiency and pressure drop of CO 2 during evaporation, condensation and heat transfer in the critical phase, both ordinary tubes and micro channels
- Test rigs for measuring thermal efficiency of evaporators and gas coolers based on CO 2
- Test rigs for measuring capacity and efficiency of CO 2 compressors
The measurements from the laboratory have formed the scientific base for our own developed: 1) Thermodynamic packages for complex gas mixtures at low temperatures; 2) Process simulator CryoPro for thermal design of gas liquefaction processes; 3) Thermodynamic property library for CO 2 as a working fluid, especially in the critical area; 4) Advanced computer model HXSIM to simulate the performance of evaporators, condensers and gas coolers