Experimental study of the behavior of a hybrid ejector-based air-conditioning system with R134a

• We conduct experiment on two working mode of system and compare their performance.
• We examine the influence of different pressure on system performance.
• We examine the area ratio effect on ejector performance.
• The system is sensitive to evaporating and generating pressure.
• The COP improvement is around 34% under hybrid mode.

A hybrid ejector-based air-conditioning system which combines a vapor compression cycle and a ejector refrigeration cycle was developed. The waste heat energy from automobile is applied as driven source towards ejector refrigeration cycle. Two ejectors with different mixing chamber diameters are applied separately for performance test and the system is operated under different working modes. The effect of generating, condensing and evaporating pressure on system performance are studied experimentally. The effect of ejector geometry parameters on ejector performance is also investigated. The performance comparison between two working modes is made and the results indicate that (1) the performance of proposed system is sensitive to the three pressures; (2) the coefficient of performance (COP) of hybrid ejector-based air-conditioning system is around 34% higher than that of conventional compressor based system which implies a potential energy saving ability of proposed hybrid system.