Enhancements in domestic refrigeration, approaching a sustainable refrigerator - A review

The refrigerator is an essential domestic appliance product and is available worldwide. Additionally, the technologies on which the majority of refrigerators are based involve high energy consumption, and environmental deterioration due to the type of energy input and the use of certain work fluids. Therefore, how refrigerators work is of great interest, and in recent years the development of diverse research in this field has intensified. As a consequence, in this article we present an exhaustive review of the research with the greatest impact on domestic refrigeration, based on vapor compression such as modeled, thermal stratification, control, environmentally innocuous refrigerants, thermal isolation, and hybrid systems, among others. Based on the above, we present the principal trends in this area, of interest to both industry and researchers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.