Experimental investigation on motive nozzle throat diameter for an ejector expansion refrigeration system

• Effects of nozzle throat diameter and its location on performance were investigated.
• The nozzle has an optimum throat diameter under the experiment condition.
• The maximum performance has been achieved by using optimum nozzle throat diameter.
• The variation of nozzle throat diameter with condenser water inlet temperature was examined.
• Motive nozzle has no optimum position in the ejector refrigeration system.

In this study, ejector was used to reduce throttling losses in a vapour compression refrigeration system. Effects on system performance of throat diameter and position of motive nozzle of ejector were investigated experimentally. An ejector was designed based on the established mathematical model and manufactured. The experiments were carried out by using different primary nozzle throat diameters. The experiments were further conducted by changing condenser water inlet temperature, which is one of the external parameters. The experimental results of the ejector system and those of the classic system were compared under same external operating conditions and for the same cooling capacity. In order to obtain same external operating conditions in both systems, the inlet conditions of the brine supplied to the evaporator and inlet water conditions (flow rate and temperature) to the condenser were kept constant. Maximum performance was obtained when the primary nozzle throat diameter was 2.3 mm within the areas considered in this study. When compared, it was experimentally determined that the ejector system that uses the optimum motive nozzle throat diameter exhibits higher COP than the classic system by 5–13%. Furthermore, it was found that the variation of coefficient of performance based on position of motive nozzle in two-phase ejector expander refrigeration cycle is lower than 1%.