Experimental study of a miniature vapor compression refrigeration system with two heat sink evaporators connected in series or in parallel

•Heat sinks were designed as snake flow channel applied in microgravity environment.•Two heat sinks were used to dissipate the produced heat from electronic devices.•The difference caused by two arrangements of heat sinks was studied.•The optimal refrigerant charge was researched in a miniature VCR system.

A miniature vapor compression refrigeration system included two heat sinks connected in series (indicated as series system) or in parallel (indicated as parallel system) was built. The performance of the series system was studied and compared with that of the parallel system. The results indicate that the largest cooling capacity of the two systems is about 160 W and the optimal refrigerant charge is about 0.6 Mtotal in the miniature vapor compress refrigeration (VCR) system. There is no relation between the optimal refrigerant charge and the arrangement of the heat sinks. The coefficient of performance (COP) of the series system ranged from 1.81 to 3.22, while the COP of the parallel system was in the range of 1.51–2.92 under the cooling capacity of 100 W. The cooling of the heat sink 2 lag behind that of the heat sink 1 in the serial system, while the refrigerant is difficult to equally distribute in the parallel system.