Majari Magazine

CHE Around Us: Refrigerators

by Michael Hutagalung on 04/09/08 at 3:22 pm | 1 Comment | |

Have you ever thought living life without refrigerator? It’s one thing that miraculously changes our life. Before the invention of refrigeration technology, the only way to preserve meat was to salt it, and iced beverages in the summer were a real luxury. No cokes, no wine, no iced drinks, no classy and luxurious refrigerators just like Wize.com has on their refrigerators reviews. Imagine that.

The idea is simple: it uses the evaporation of a liquid to absorb heat, making a cold environment. Refrigerator is designed to keep food cold because cold temperatures help food stay fresh longer. The activity of bacteria, which all food contains, will be slower in cold surroundings so that it takes longer for the bacteria to spoil the food.

What do actually happen inside a refrigerator? How can it be so cold like that? Well, it is simply one of the most important thermodynamic cycle: the refrigeration cycle. This is what happens to keep the refrigerator cool:

In the cycle, a circulating refrigerant such as Freon and ammonia enters the compressor as a vapor. The vapor is compressed at constant entropy and exits the compressor superheated. The superheated vapor travels through the condenser which first cools and removes the superheat and then condenses the vapor into a liquid by removing additional heat at constant pressure and temperature. Then, the liquid refrigerant goes through the expansion valve (also called a throttle valve) where its pressure abruptly decreases, causing flash evaporation and auto-refrigeration of, typically, less than half of the liquid.

That results in a mixture of liquid and vapor at a lower temperature and pressure. The cold liquid-vapor mixture then travels through the evaporator coil or tubes and is completely vaporized by cooling the warm air (from the space being refrigerated) being blown by a fan across the evaporator coil or tubes. The resulting refrigerant vapor returns to the compressor inlet to complete the cycle.

It is interesting to understand how the a box of refrigerator, which have a variety of shapes, sizes, and functions, actually operates based on a thermodynamic cycle. Do you imagine how difficult the food preservation is without this technology? Well, just don’t. And should any of you be interested in buying any kind of refrigerator, you can read these refrigerators reviews from Wize.com. In addition to your comprehensive understanding about the refrigeration cycle, you may sharpen you aesthetic skill a bit by reading their refrigerators reviews .