EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF REFRIGERANT-OIL BEHAVIOR INSIDE ROTARY COMPRESSOR

A quality of a refrigeration cycle and a reliability of a compressor can be reduced if a refrigerant including excessive lubricating oil is exhausted from the compressor. Thus, the analysis of the oil behavior inside the compressor is required to prevent the problem. A tested rotary compressor with visualization windows has been manufactured in this study to investigate the oil behavior using developed visualization techniques. The oil behaviors at various operating conditions have been quantified to obtain the relationship with the outlet pressure inside the compressor. Also, the effect of the operating conditions on the quantity of the exhausted oil from the rotary compressor has been investigated using the visualization technique.