Experimental investigation on a novel cold storage defrosting device based on electric heater and reverse cycle

It is universally acknowledged that the accumulation of frost on the evaporator surface will reduce the cooling capacity and performance of the cold storage. Therefore defrosting must be periodically and effectively carried out to avoid the evaporator blockage. The electric heater defrosting (EHD) and reversed cycle defrosting (RCD) methods are usually used in cold storages. However, no matter what method is adopted, there will be extra thermal load distributed to the compartments which lead to an unfavorable storage temperature fluctuation and then cause quality loss of the stored food. In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a novel cold storage defrosting device based on EHD and RCD was proposed in this paper. Experiment was performed on the device to investigate its effect on several aspects including energy saving, reduction of cold storage temperature fluctuation and improvement of compressor operational stability etc. The results showed that this novel device could remarkably increase energy utilization and reduce temperature fluctuation of the cold storage, which was beneficial for long-term storage of products in the cold storage. Moreover, it was able to increase the operational stability of the compressor. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.