Energy-exergy and enviro-economic analysis of water-cooled brazed plate building-integrated condenser for cooling appliances in dwellings.

Globally, domestic refrigerators account for over 13% of the total energy consumption in residential buildings. The brazed plate water-cooled condenser (BPWCC) is compact in size and an attractive option to reduce the energy consumption of refrigerators using domestic water tanks. This study evaluated the performance of a household refrigerator with a secondary refrigerant calorimeter and BPWCC, using an appropriate experimental setup. Water storage tanks with capacities of 750 l, 1000 l, and 2000 l supplied cooling water to BPWCC. The study evaluated how well the modified domestic refrigerator (MDR) worked with R134a and a blend of R290 and R600a (54.8:45.2), using 108 g and 50 g of charge, respectively. When the MDR was charged with the R290/R600a blend, its COP, exergy efficiency, per-day energy consumption, and total equivalent warming impact were 0.93-1.18, 24-24.8%, 1.28-1.4 kWh, and 5019, respectively. BPWCC's exergy efficiency went up by 25-55% when the condensing temperature went down, and it used 11.5-27% less energy per day than air-cooled condensers. Besides reducing the cost rate by 32-37%, the modified system showed a payback period below 3 years. However, to mature the proposed system, future research must focus on several issues related to the integration of the domestic water system with the BPWCC.