Simulation of Refrigeration System in a Food Processing Company: A Case of Nigeria Bottling Company Ikeja

Abstract

A simulation software was developed for a single stage vapour compression cycle. A study which was carried out on an existing system and a mathematical analysis using the energy and mass balance principle was used to develop the simulation model for the system. At full capacity of the system, the simulation gave a result with an error of 4.3% and when a twenty four-hour real data was compared with simulated data from the software, it was found that there is no significant difference between real data and simulated data having a p-value of 6.22% at a significance level of 5%. Investigation of the effect of condensing temperature, evaporating temperature and compressor speed on other system properties gave trends which agree with experimental data from similar refrigeration system and this analysis was used to carry out an optimisation of the existing system.