Experimental air conditioning energy evaluation under Caribbean climate conditions

Hermes Ramirez-Leon; Maria Angelica Gonzalez-Carmona; Javier Jiménez-Cabas; José Escorcia-Gutierrez; Antonio Bula

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14464

Experimental air conditioning energy evaluation under Caribbean climate conditions

Heliyon. 2023 Mar 11;9(3):e14464. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14464. eCollection 2023 Mar.

Authors

Hermes Ramirez-Leon^{1

2}, Maria Angelica Gonzalez-Carmona³, Javier Jiménez-Cabas⁴, José Escorcia-Gutierrez⁴, Antonio Bula²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad Simón Bolívar, 080002, Colombia.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, 081007, Colombia.
³ Programa de pós-graduação en engenharia mecânica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife 50670-901, Brazil.
⁴ Department of Computational Science and Electronics, Universidad de la Costa, CUC, Barranquilla, 080002, Colombia.

Abstract

A 2³ factorial design was performed to analyze the performance of a mini-split air conditioning system under several psychrometric air conditions at the evaporator inlet, similar to Tropical Caribbean region conditions. In addition, a search for new energy-saving opportunities was performed. The results showed that interactions between the temperature of the air inlet, the humidity of the air inlet, and the fan speed level are significant in the mini-split energy performance under Caribbean climate conditions. Hence, working on an oriented energy savings control strategy is necessary. Therefore, this study recommends developing a fan speed control scheme, generating energy savings of around 10% in the air conditioning unit.

Keywords: Air conditioning; Design of experiments; Energy performance; Tropical region climate.