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Food in a refrigerator with its door open. A refrigerator, commonly shortened to fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so that its inside is cooled to a temperature below the room temperature. [1]
An air conditioner requires work to cool a living space, moving heat from the interior being cooled (the heat source) to the outdoors (the heat sink). Similarly, a refrigerator moves heat from inside the cold icebox (the heat source) to the warmer room-temperature air of the kitchen (the heat sink).
Heat naturally flows from hot to cold. Work is applied to cool a living space or storage volume by pumping heat from a lower temperature heat source into a higher temperature heat sink. Insulation is used to reduce the work and energy needed to achieve and maintain a lower temperature in the cooled space.
A solar-powered refrigerator is a refrigerator which runs on energy directly provided by sun, and may include photovoltaic or solar thermal energy. Solar-powered refrigerators are able to keep perishable goods such as meat and dairy cool in hot climates and are used to keep much-needed vaccines at their appropriate temperature to avoid spoilage.
An absorption refrigerator is a refrigerator that uses a heat source to provide the energy needed to drive the cooling process. Solar energy, burning a fossil fuel, waste heat from factories, and district heating systems are examples of heat sources that can be used.
A representative pressure–volume diagram for a refrigeration cycle. Vapour-compression refrigeration or vapor-compression refrigeration system (VCRS), [1] in which the refrigerant undergoes phase changes, is one of the many refrigeration cycles and is the most widely used method for air conditioning of buildings and automobiles.
The Einstein–Szilard or Einstein refrigerator is an absorption refrigerator which has no moving parts, operates at constant pressure, and requires only a heat source to operate. It was jointly invented in 1926 by Albert Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd , who patented it in the U.S. on November 11, 1930 ( U.S. patent 1,781,541 ).
The choice of working fluids is known to have a significant impact on the thermodynamic as well as economic performance of the cycle. A suitable fluid must exhibit favorable physical, chemical, environmental, safety and economic properties such as low specific volume (high density), viscosity, toxicity, flammability, ozone depletion potential (ODP), global warming potential (GWP) and cost, as ...