How Refrigerators work then and now

Process Chillers may come as a foreign term to many of you. This is because it is often only used formally. There are different types of chillers out there and the most common of all is one item that is essential to our everyday living: the refrigerator.

The refrigerator is an air cooled chiller that allows us to chill or freeze things to lengthen their shelf life. But refrigerators back then and now did not follow the same process. 

REFRIGERATORS (then):

At the back of a refrigerator, there’s a long thin tube that goes in loop. This tube is connected to the pump powered by an electric motor. Inside this tube is Freon which is a type of gas but is also known chemically as Chloro-Floro-Carbon or better known as CFC. CFC’s start out in liquid form and are pumped through the coils in the freezer area. Here, the liquid turns to gas and when it does, it absorbs some of the heat that’s in the freezer compartment. This is the reason why air cooled chiller’s freezers are super cold and filled with ice all around especially for used chillers that haven’t been cleaned. The pump sucks the CFC gas and passes it through the thinner pipes located outside the refrigerator and compresses it. The process of compression turns the gas back into liquid form and heat is given off. This is the reason why it’s hot when you stand next to your refrigerator. They cycle continues inside this process chiller.

REFRIGERATORS (now):

Because CFC’s were harmful to the atmosphere if they leak out of refrigerators, manufacturers had to find a way to do away with it. Hence, modern day air cooled chillers use HFC chemically known as tetrafluoroethane. This type of gas turns to liquid if it is cooled to -15.9 degrees Fahrenheit. The process all starts with a motor and compressor that squeezes the HFC and gas heats up. As it cools, HFC turns to liquid. The liquid then flows through a tiny hole called the expansion valve. There is a low-pressure are between the valve and the compressor because the compressor is pulling ammonia gas out of that area. When HFC gets to this area, it vaporizes and turns to gas. The coils go through the freezer and the colder liquid in them pulls heat out of the compartments, leaving freezers super cold. The compressor then sucks up the cold gas and the cycle continues.

Refrigerators in the earlier days are different from how refrigerators work nowadays. The difference may be subtle but the overall effect is huge.