Study on Capillary Pipe Length Variation on Fishing Refrigeration Box Performance

Abstract

One of the components that significantly influences the performance of a cooling (refrigerator) box onboard a fishing ship is its capillary pipes. To achieve high system efficiency, the size of the capillary pipes must be adjusted to the compressor's capacity. This is because the size of the capillary pipe significantly affects the frictional resistance, which could lead to reduced system efficiency. To find out the length of the capillary pipe that is best at reducing the temperature of the fishing refrigeration box, experiments were carried out in this study with 3 (three) variations of capillary pipe lengths with the same diameter. It was found that the best temperature drop occurred at a capillary pipe length of 2.5 meters with the lowest temperature of 3.4 °C. In comparison, the less-than-maximum temperature drop occurred in the 2-meter capillary pipe length with a final temperature of 13.4 °C. Changes in capillary pipe length also impact the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the fishing refrigeration system. The highest COP was obtained for the case with the longest capillary pipe length.