Fuzzy Control of Superheat in Container Refrigeration using an Electronic Expansion Valve

This paper reports a new method of refrigerant flow control in a full-scale commercial container refrigeration system. Fuzzy logic control, which has gained popularity in recent years due to its simplicity in application to practical situations demanding a non-mathematical model based control strategy, is applied to the control of superheat using an electronic expansion valve. A comparison between the conventional proportional-integral and derivative controls of the superheat was made with fuzzy control. It was shown that the fuzzy controller performed better in terms of smaller overshoot of the superheat and faster settling time of the superheat response during the pulldown of evaporator load and compressor cycling mode for capacity control. It was found that the coefficient of performance of the container refrigeration system could be improved by using an electronic expansion valve instead of the conventional thermostatic expansion valve.

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