Applying a magnetic field on liquid line of vapour compression system is a novel technique to increase a performance of the system

•Magnetic field enhances the performance of vapour compression system.•Magnetic field strength has direct relation with increase in COP.•There is a limiting field strength till which this improvement is observed.•Beyond limiting field strength system performance degrades.•Performance improvement due to change in thermo-physical properties of refrigerant.

This paper presents experimental investigations carried out to study the effect of magnetic field on energy savings in vapour compression system. Application of magnetic field to fluid flow breaks the molecule resulting in a decrease in the viscosity of the fluid. This drop in the viscosity reduces the pumping power required by the compressor as well as enhances the heat transfer rates in the condenser and evaporator due to increased mass flow rates. The net impact is improvement in the COP of the system. Considering the number of refrigerator and air conditioning systems sold globally every year any improvement in the COP could considerably save the energy bills as well as the energy requirement. The main benefit of this investigation is improvement in the system performance improvement in Evaporator capacity or drops in compressor power or increased COP at no cost i.e. no additional input energy. Only cost involved is the initial cost of magnets to be procured for applying suitable magnetic field. The present work was focused on first establishing the effect of magnetic field on the performance of the vapour compression system and then investigating the impact of magnetic-field strength on COP. The magnetic field strength was varied by increasing the number of magnet pairs applied to the liquid line (from condenser outlet to entry of expansion valve). The COP was initially measured without application of magnetic field, and then magnetic field applied to liquid refrigerant was increased by increasing the number of the magnetic pair from 1 to 5. The strength of each magnetic pair was 3000 gauss. The result obtained showed improvement in COP of the system under investigation. The COP of the system increased up to13.13% for R134a and 21.87% for R600a refrigerant.