Evaporating temperature estimation of refrigeration systems based on vibration data-driven soft sensors

Abstract

The evaluation of the operating conditions of refrigeration compressors once installed in household appliances is challenging due to the need to install pressure transducers, a process which requires system evacuation and refrigerant reintroduction. In addition, changes in the piping modify the characteristics of the original product. This paper proposes a soft-sensing technique based on vibration measurements of the compressor surface to predict the evaporating temperature. Different machine learning (ML) techniques are evaluated as data-driven prediction models, namely multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks, least squares boosting, generalized additive model, random forest, extreme learning machine, and random vector functional link neural networks. These techniques were applied to data obtained from a test rig designed to emulate compressor operation in a refrigeration system, with an operating envelope from -30 °C to -10 °C for the evaporating temperature and from 34 °C to 54 °C for the condensing temperature. The results showed that, with a single vibration measurement point, it was possible to use an MLP technique to estimate the evaporating temperature with a root mean squared error of 1.74 °C in a non-intrusive way. For the other prediction techniques, the errors were a bit higher than for the MLP, but the maximum error value was about 2.5 °C in all cases.