Experimental and Numerical Study on Supersonic Ejectors Working with R-1234ze(E)

¹ Department of Power Engineering Equipment, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Liberec, Studentska 2, 46117, Liberec, the Czech Republic
² Department of Heating and Cooling Technics, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Bialystok University of Technology, ul. Wiejska 45C, 15-351 Bialystok, Poland

^* Corresponding author: jan.kracik@tul.cz

Published online: 4 June 2018

Abstract

These days, much effort is being put into lowering the consumption of electric energy and involving renewable energy sources. Many engineers and designers are trying to develop environment-friendly technologies worldwide. It is related to incorporating appropriate devices into such technologies. The object of this paper is to investigate these devices in connection with refrigeration systems. Ejectors can be considered such as these devices. The primary interest of this paper is to investigate the suitability of a numerical model for an ejector, which is incorporated into a refrigeration system. In the present paper, there have been investigated seven different test runs of working of the ejector with a working fluid R-1234ze(E). Some of the investigated cases seem to have a good agreement and there are no significant discrepancies between them, however, there are also cases that do not correspond to the experimental data at all. The ejector has been investigated in both on-design and off-design working modes. A comparison between the experimental and numerical data (CFD) performed by Ansys Fluent software is presented and discussed for both an ideal and a real gas model. In addition, an enhanced analytical model has been introduced for all runs of the ejector.