A new model for depicting mass flow rate characteristic of electronic expansion valves

• Published in: Experimental thermal and fluid science Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 214 - 219
• Main Authors: Liu, Jinghui, Chen, Jiangping, Ye, Qifang, Chen, Zhijiu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Elsevier Inc 01.10.2007; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Coefficients; Computational fluid dynamics; Electronic expansion valve (EEV); Electronics; Energy; Energy. Thermal use of fuels; Exact sciences and technology; Fluid flow; Fluids; Mass flow rate; Mass flow rate characteristic; Materials and auxiliary equipments used in energy engineering; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; Refrigeration; Throttling device; Electronic expansion valve (EEV); Refrigeration; Throttling device; Mass flow rate characteristic; Mass flow rate; Expansion valve; Valve; Experimental study; Modeling
• ISSN: 0894-1777; 1879-2286
• DOI: 10.1016/j.expthermflusci.2007.03.008

This paper experimentally investigates the mass flow rate characteristic of an electronic expansion valve (EEV). A new model for depicting the mass flow rate characteristic of EEVs, which employs the combination of the homogeneous equilibrium fluid model (HEM) and the frozen flow model (FFM), is developed. On the basis of tested data, an equation of meta-stability coefficient is proposed. Different from the mass flow coefficient in the conventional model, the meta-stability coefficient has nothing to do with the inlet pressure and the outlet state parameters. Only the inlet sub-cooled degree and the flow area are correlated in the equation. Compared with the experimental results, the deviation of the predicted mass flow rate by the model is in the range of −8.59% to 7.56%.