Earthship USA, Inc.  
AIR CYCLE REFRIGERATION SYSTEMS
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©2004
Earthship USA, Inc. 
    Principle Behind Air Cycle Refrigeration

Fig.1 shows the Earthship AIRS process for maintaining a -20F temperature in the storage space. A motor driven compressor (1st stage compressor) makes compressed air up to approximately 20 psi and 165F, which is cooled by the 1st cooling tower. The air is then compressed to 26 psi by the 2nd stage compressor which is driven by an expander, rejecting heat afterward to ambient again by a 2nd cooling tower. It is then further cooled by returned air from the refrigerated warehouse through a heat recovery heat exchanger. Inlet air of the expander is at 26 psi and -4F.  The air is adiabatically expanded to a low temperature of -67F by the expander, which is blown directly to warehouse by the residual pressure of expansion, so the system doesn't need any fan coil unit for air distribution in the warehouse.

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At partial load conditions, the working points of the compressors and expander change depending on the inlet temperatures and pressures, which come from the temperatures of both outside and inside the warehouse.  Since the system is based on a multistage design, the expander and 2nd stage compressor are independent of the motor speed and driven freely, so they have a wide range of flexibility.

In addition, using 2 stages compression opens up the system to utilize various driving devices for the 1st stage compressor.

From an efficiency point of view, the two stage compression and inter-cooling forms a near reverse Ericsson cycle which has higher efficiency than a reverse Brayton cycle.