An Investigation of the Feasibility of Refrigerant Charge Loss Detection Using Low Cost Measurements

970106

02/24/1997

Event
SAE International Congress and Exposition
Authors Abstract
Content
The feasibility of automatically detecting refrigerant charge loss in mobile air conditioning (MAC) systems by analyzing inexpensive dynamic measurements was studied. An indicator of the refrigerant inventory of the evaporator was developed. This measure, termed Time to Temperature Turning (TTT), is based on dynamic measurement of the evaporator outlet refrigerant temperature, and correlates strongly with charge level. TTT correlated well with clutch cycling behavior, a metric which is employed in current shop diagnostic practice to indicate refrigerant charge loss.
Laboratory data were generated from a factorial experiment design on the following factors: condenser air inlet temperature, condenser air flow rate, evaporator air inlet temperature, compressor speed, and refrigerant charge. Experiments to date were conducted with a dry evaporator.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/970106
Pages
9
Citation
Collins, C., Miller, N., and Dunn, W., "An Investigation of the Feasibility of Refrigerant Charge Loss Detection Using Low Cost Measurements," SAE Technical Paper 970106, 1997, https://doi.org/10.4271/970106.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Feb 24, 1997
Product Code
970106
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English