Refrigeration and Air Conditioning - Ramesh Chandra Arora

This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the theoretical principles and practical aspects of refrigeration and air conditioning systems. Written by a teacher with 30 years experience, this work is intended to provide students with a deeper understanding and a firm grasp of the basic principles of this exciting subject area. This text is ideally suited for undergraduate education in mechanical engineering programmes and specialised postgraduate education in thermosciences.

The text begins by reviewing, in a simple and precise manner, the physical principles of three pillars of refrigeration and air conditioning – thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics. Following an overview of the history of refrigeration, subsequent chapters provide exhaustive coverage of the principles, applications and design of several types of refrigeration systems and their associated components, such as compressors, condensers, evaporators, and expansion devices. Refrigerants are examined in a separate chapter.

The second part of the book, beginning with the historical background of air conditioning, discusses the subject of psychrometrics at the heart of understanding the design and implementation of air conditioning processes and systems, which are subsequently dealt with in later chapters. It also explains the design practices for cooling and heating load calculations. Each chapter contains several worked-out examples that clarify the material discussed and illustrate the use of basic principles in engineering applications. Each chapter also ends with a set of review questions.