With the requirements of ozone protection and greenhouse gas emission reduction, CFCs which were widely used as
refrigerants in refrigeration systems have now been substituted forcedly all over the world. Any substitute is
generally asked to have specially properties such as zero ODP, as low as GWP, good thermodynamic properties,
similar behaviors in refrigeration systems to original refrigerant, low price, no flammability and no toxicity to
human beings etc.
Following the above principles, R404A is considered as the good refrigerant to replace R502 in the refrigeration
system with low evaporating temperature. It has zero ODP, very low GWP, adjacent performances to R502 and
other well characteristics.
Many researches were already done on the flow and heat transfer properties of R404A. Ferreira et al. (2003) studied
R404A condensing processes under forced flow conditions inside smooth, microfin and cross-hatched Horizontal
Tubes. The heat transfer formulae were given and the authors indicated that the pressure drop in microfin tube is
25% higher than that in smooth tube; Motta et al. (2000 & 2002) studied the flow characteristic of R404A and
R404A/Oil mixture through adiabatic capillary tubes with different diameters, 0.6mm and 1.85, and different lengths,
1.05m, 1.30m and 1.60m. The results showed that R404A has good flow characteristic in capillary tubes; Boissieux
et al. (2000) studied the two-phase heat transfer coefficients of three HFC refrigerants, R404A, R407C and Isceon
59, in evaporating process and in condensing process inside a horizontal smooth tube. Some formulae for heat
transfer coefficients were compared; Gabrielii and Vamling (1997) did experimental researches and simulations of
R407C, R404A and R410A in tube-and-shell condensers.
China has forbidden the usage of CFCs such as R502 since 2006. Thus, two challenges in this field occur, the new
R404A refrigeration system designing and the rebuilding of existing R502 refrigeration systems to use R404A as
refrigerants. All the researches in the past make it relatively easy to design a new R404A system. But there are many
existing R502 refrigeration systems which are still in operation and could not be thrown away soon for its cost or
other reasons. In this paper, a R502 refrigeration system with low evaporating temperature of -40