Experimental investigation on operating performance of digital variable multiple air conditioning system

Abstract The objective of this paper was to study operating performance of digital variable multiple (DVM) air conditioning (AC) system by experiments. Variable refrigerant flow performance, part load performance, defrosting performance, and energy consumption model of DVM AC system were analyzed by experimental data. The results indicate that variable refrigerant volume characteristic and excellent part load performance are beneficial to seasonal energy saving operation of DVM AC system. Seasonal energy consumption of DVM AC system is able to be calculated based on hourly energy consumption model and defrosting energy consumption model obtained by experimental data regression. Under defrosting condition, indoor unit which contributes the most to defrosting is the one nearest to outdoor unit and its corresponding indoor thermal environment is adversely affected. Thus, it is suggested to take this factor into account when configuring the capacity of the indoor unit which is nearest to outdoor unit.