Quality measurement of refrigerant two-phase flow in refrigeration cycles

In refrigeration cycles, quality measurement of two-phase refrigerant flow is required to monitor the cycle operation. Although sectional void fraction of the two-phase flow can be detected in several ways, the quality of the two-phase flow is hardly obtained from the sectional void fraction since velocities of liquid- and gas-phase in the pipe are different from each other. In this study, a new quality measuring method was developed by installing multiple narrow tubes in a test section. By installing a gas bypass tube with the multiple narrow tubes, the quality measurement having an accuracy within 0.03 was achieved in the quality range from 0.05 to 0.8. In addition, the influence of oil contamination in the refrigerant flow on the flow pattern in the narrow tube was examined. It was found that the flow pattern in the narrow tube became bubble flow by the mixing of oil.