The ideal vapor-compression refrigeration cycle

A walk through with diagrams of the ideal vapor compression refrigeration cycle.

This assumes that you already know that a vapor compression refrigerator uses work to move heat against its natural direction, i.e. using work to move heat from a lower temperature space (like a refrigerator box) to a higher temperature environment (like a home or the outdoors).

Language Errata:
Isentropic: I mistakenly say isoentropic when I mean isentropic. Which I have been doing for years. Doh. At least in Spanish I think isoentrópico is as accepted as isentrópico. In English, you can say isoenthalpic as the same thing as isenthalpic. To go further down this language maze, it looks like when taking the greek root for equal (i.e. iso) and applying it to words that start with a vowel, English often drops the 'o', but not as much for consonants like isobaric (same pressure), isochoric (same volume), isometric (same dimensions), isothermal (same temperatures), isocline (same slope), etc. If you know more about this, please let me know!

Condenser: I spelled condenser correctly in the captions, but not the one on the top of the white board! Or maybe my handwriting is that bad. :) It should be spelled condenser (and not condensor).

Vapor vs gas: Especially since this is a heatpump with the refrigerant going through phase changes it would have been more accurate to refer to it in the gas phase as a vapor, both in the case of saturated vapor and superheated vapor.

Thanks for the feedback, please keep it coming!

#heatpump #refrigeration #thermodynamics #thermo