Experimental study of an R290 split-type air conditioner using a falling film condenser

R290 is one of the most promising refrigerants for split-type air conditioners (STAC) because of its excellent environmental and thermodynamic properties. However, R290 has flammability. There is necessary to improve the STAC design to reduce the refrigerant charge for the safety use. This work proposes a novel falling film condensing technology to address this problem. The novel condenser was setup on a STAC and tested in the standard psychrometric chamber. Experimental results show that using falling film condenser significantly reduces the refrigerant charge. The best performance is obtained with 290 g of R290 charge, for which the cooling capacity is 2690 W and the coefficient of performance (COP) is 3.55, meeting the safety and energy efficiency requirements. This result provides a new technical route for the application of an R290 STAC.