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Theoretical and experimental study on a self-

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refrigerated vehicles

Article in Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering September 2014

DOI: 10.1016/j.jngse.2014.06.022

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Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jngse

Theoretical and experimental study on a self-refrigerating system for

LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicles
Hongbo Tan a, Yanzhong Li a, *, Hanfei Tuo b
a
Xi'an Jiaotong University, Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenic Engineering, Xi'an 710049, PR China
b
University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 1206 W Green St, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: LNG-fueled vehicle has been regarded as a promising substitute of the diesel vehicle owing to its clean
Received 15 May 2014 burning characteristics. Especially for refrigerated vehicles, an additional advantage is that recovering of
Received in revised form the LNG cold energy during vaporization will provide the refrigerating effect and therefore reduce the
27 June 2014
engine power used to drive the conventional vaporecompression system (VCS). This study focuses on
Accepted 29 June 2014
Available online 18 July 2014
analysis of the feasibility of a self-refrigerated vehicle by recovering the cold energy of LNG fuel. A
prototype of a self-refrigerating system was constructed and its refrigeration performance has been
investigated experimentally. The interrelations of the refrigerating temperature, the cooling capacity and
Keywords:
Refrigerated vehicle
the consumption rate of LNG fuel were studied. The temperature eld uniformity and the temperature
Liqueed natural gas falling characteristics of the refrigerated compartment were discussed in this paper. The experiment
Recovery of cold energy results showed that the refrigerating temperature of the compartment could be kept lower
20  C when
the LNG consumption rate is larger than 5.607 kg/h. On the basis of the theoretical analysis, this value of
LNG consumption rate could be achieved when the power output of the engine (CY4102CNG) for the
LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle is more than one third of its maximum output power (75 kW) under the
full-load operating condition. The original mechanical refrigeration unit (Carrier Viento 200) could be
totally substituted by the proposed self-refrigerating system under this condition. Furthermore, the
study on the temperature dropping and temperature eld uniformity characteristics of the refrigerated
compartment showed that a satisfactory result can be achieved.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The vapor absorption refrigeration system driven by waste heat

For the purpose of guaranteeing the quality of frozen and
perishable freights during road transportation, refrigerated vehi-
cles equipped with refrigeration units are used to maintain the
frozen cargoes at a specic low temperature and to prolong the
shelf life of these cargoes. Transport Refrigeration Units (TRUs)
currently used in refrigerated vehicles are predominately of the
Vapor Compression Refrigeration (VCR) driven by Diesel engine, a
compressor is mounted in the vehicle engine compartment and is
driven from the engine crankshaft via belt. In view of the low en-
gine efciency (about 35e40%), green-house gas and particulate
matter emission of the diesel engine driven TRUs, some novel
refrigeration technologies have been put forward as alternative
schemes by many scientists.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 10 82668725; fax: 86 10 82668789.
E-mail addresses: thbxjtu@gmail.com (H. Tan), yzli-epe@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (Y. Li).
of the exhaust gas was proposed to provide refrigerating capacity in
road transport vehicles (Horuz, 1998, 1999), the exhaust gases of a
six-liter turbo diesel engine were used to drive a 10 kW commercial
aqua-ammonia vapor absorption refrigeration system. The rated
capacity of the refrigeration unit was successfully achieved in the
study. Furthermore, Spence et al. put forward an air-cycle refriger-
ation unit for road transport (Spence et al., 2004, 2005). The results
showed that the air-cycle system could potentially match the overall
fuel consumption of the VCR. Recently, an on-vehicle latent heat
storage system incorporating an off-vehicle refrigeration unit was
proposed for road transport by Liu et al. (2012). A prototype of Phase
Change Thermal Storage Unit (PCTSU) was developed to be charged
by an off-vehicle refrigeration unit in the warehouse. On the road,
PCTSU discharged the stored cooling capacity to refrigerate the
cargo. It was reported that the energy cost of the proposed system
was up to 86.4% less than VCR system, while delivering the benet of
low local GHG emission, improved temperature control and reduced
noisy level. In fact, the cold energy storage problem is so important
that has been investigated by many scientists. Li et al. (2012, 2013)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jngse.2014.06.022
1875-5100/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 H. Tan et al. / Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 20 (2014) 192e199
reviewed the recent development of available cold storage materials
for subzero applications and for air conditioning application.
Moreover, the thermodynamic properties of TBABeTHF hydrate
mixture were investigated experimentally (Li et al., 2010). Recently,
a novel short-term absorption heat storage system for residential
application was put forward by Li et al. (2014).
The present authors proposed the concept of a self-refrigerated
vehicle by using the cold energy of its fuel, Liqueed Natural Gas
(LNG) (Tan et al., 2010). As a kind of cryogenic cooling technologies
for road transport, it has the following advantages: (1) recovering
and using free cooling capacity of LNG; (2) rapidly lowering the
temperature of the refrigerated container; (3) saving energy and
protecting the environment; (4) low level noise. Conventional
cryogenic cooling systems usually inject the liquid nitrogen or
carbon dioxide into the refrigerated space to lower the temperature
rapidly. A cryogenic liquid tank and a cryo-mechanical system are
accessional to store and distribute the cryogenic refrigerants.
However, the proposed system recovers the cryogenic cooling ca-
pacity of LNG which works as refrigerant in the storage compart-
ment and then fuel in the combustion engine. The refrigeration
system is a part of the fuel supply system, and thus additional
cryogenic liquid storage and distribution systems are not required.
The purpose of this paper is to validate the feasibility of the
novel concept and investigate the performance of the proposed
self-refrigerating system for LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicles. The
feasibility of a light-duty refrigerated vehicle utilizing LNG cold
energy was analyzed theoretically. A prototype of self-refrigerating
system for a LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle was constructed based
on a commercial thermal insulation compartment manufactured by
a Chinese refrigerated vehicle manufacturer.
2. The feasibility analysis of the self-refrigerated vehicle
using the cold energy of LNG
2.1. Utilization of LNG cold energy
LNG is a kind of cryogenic liquid which is usually storage at 111 K
(
162  C) and ambient pressure. Feed natural gas is liqueed at
cryogenic liquefaction units after removing the heavy hydrocarbon,
acid, CO2 and water. The liquid form of natural gas in China usually
contains about 98% of methane. The complete combustion of one
mole of methane releases one mole CO2, two moles water and
890 kJ/mole of heat. Due to its clean-burning nature, LNG is known
as a very attractive eco-friendly fuel. It is reported that combustion
of LNG can reduce the particulate matters to near 99%, sulfur oxides
(SOx) emissions to near 100%, nitrogen oxides (NOx) to 80%, and 70%
fewer greenhouse gas emissions (Tamura et al., 2001, Kumar et al.,
2011). Therefore, LNG is regarded as a promising substitute fuel for
automobiles, especially for heavy-duty vehicles.
Liquefaction of natural gas is an energy intensive process, and
about 5.5e6 kWh of electric energy is consumed by a typical
cryogenic liquefaction device to yield one kilomole of LNG (Hasan
et al., 2009, Remeljej and Hoadley, 2006). A large amount of cryo-
genic energy which is transformed from electric power in lique-
faction process is stored in LNG. However, LNG will be vaporized
again to be supplied as natural gas at ambient temperature at the
user end, and the precious cold energy will be released to the
environment. How to fully utilize the cold energy of LNG has
attracted more attentions of worldwide scientists in the related
research elds. Generally, the LNG cold energy recovery methods
can be classied into two categories, i.e. power generation and
cooling capacity utilization.
Power generation based on LNG cold energy which uses LNG as
heat sink in a power cycle has been intensively studied in recent
decades. Hisazumi et al. (1998) proposed a system which consists of
193
a freon mixture Rankine cycle, a natural gas Rankine cycle and a
gas-steam combined cycle. The results showed that about 60 kWh
of electric energy could be generated by recovering the LNG cold
energy when one ton of LNG is vaporized into natural gas at
3.5 MPa. Wang et al. (2004) proposed a combined power cycle
including a natural gas direct-expanding cycle and an Organic
Rankine Cycle (ORC) to utilize the cold energy of LNG and low-
grade heat energy. A cryogenic cycle using a binary mixture as
work uid, which is combined with a vapor adsorption process, was
proposed to improve the performance of a power generation sys-
tem based on LNG cold energy by Liu and Guo (2011). Wang et al.
(2013) analyzed an ammoniaewater power system with LNG as
heat sink, and obtained the Pareto frontier solution for the system.
Quasi-combined power cycle modes with a supercritical CO2
Rankine cycle (Zhang and Lior, 2006) and a CO2 Brayton cycle
(Zhang et al., 2010) were proposed to be used in a LNG fueled power
plant. Zero CO2 emission and high efciency are regarded as the
main merits of the novel cycle. A cascade power generation system
with two working uids was proposed by Szargut and Szczygiel
(2009) to utilize the cold energy of LNG.
Besides power generation, the cold energy of LNG can also be
used to precool other cryogenic streams (e.g. circulated nitrogen in
air separation system) which will release cooling capacity at lower
temperature. As we all know, natural gas is chilled into liquid form
(at 111 K) at the cost of 5.5e6 kWh of electricity per kilomole of
LNG. From the thermodynamic point of view, it is more efcient
and reasonable to transport the cold energy of LNG to a cryogenic
refrigeration system with a refrigerating temperature lower than
111 K. Air separation using cold energy of LNG is one of promising
choices for LNG cold recovery with high efciency. Agrawal (1991)
invented a process for the liquefaction of a nitrogen stream in a
cryogenic air separation system by utilizing the cold energy of LNG.
A circulating nitrogen stream with high pressure is used as the heat
transfer medium to transfer the cold energy of LNG to other low
pressure nitrogen streams. Many similar air separation schemes
based on LNG cold energy have been presented in recent years
(Herron et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2009; Jin et al., 2010). It is reported
that about 50% of electricity could be saved by utilizing the cold
energy of LNG in an air separation system. Moreover, the cold en-
ergy of LNG was suggested to be used as cold source to product
liquid CO2 (Aspelund and Gundersen, 2009a,b), separate the light
hydrocarbon from LNG (Gao et al., 2011), refrigerate in agro-food
industry (Messineo and Panno, 2011) and so on.
As mentioned above, air separation devices or power generation
plants can achieve a relatively high efciency by using the cold
energy of LNG. However, large-scale sites, complex structures, and
costly devices limit these high-efcient schemes to be used in small
LNG supplying sites, for example, in LNG-fueled vehicles. A limited
amount of cold energy is released in a LNG-fueled vehicle, it is
about 4 kW for the present investigated LNG-fueled engine,
CY4102CNG as shown in Fig. 3. The cold energy of LNG should be
recovered and transferred to refrigeration units by a compact, low-
cost, and simple heat transfer system, and the refrigeration duty of
the cold recovery system should be matched with the fuel con-
sumption rate of LNG-fueled vehicle. Most of all, the cold recovery
system is supposed to be with excellent thermal insulation per-
formance. On the other hand, the compartment of a refrigerated
vehicle is usually constructed by polyurethane foam boards or
other materials with low thermal conductivity. Therefore, the
cooling duty of a refrigerated vehicle is relatively low, and the
balance would be easily achieved between available cooling ca-
pacity of LNG and cold duty of the refrigerated vehicle. From a
practical point of view, the self-refrigerated vehicle utilizing the
cold energy of LNG is a feasible and promising scheme on the
conveyances driven by LNG-fueled engines.
194 H. Tan et al. / Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 20 (2014) 192e199
Fig. 1. The schematic diagram of a light-duty LNG-chilled refrigerated vehicle 1, LNG
tank; 2, Valves box; 3, Cold energy recovery heat exchanger; 4, Induced draft fan; 5,
Superheater; 6, Engine; 7, Refrigerated vehicle body.
2.2. The conception of the light-duty self-refrigerated vehicle by
LNG cold energy
The schematic diagram of a light-duty self-refrigerated vehicle
is shown in Fig. 1. The cryogenic liqueed natural gas ows into the
heat exchanger (3) to be vaporized. The air in the compartment is
circulated by an induced draft fan to heat the LNG in the heat
exchanger (3), and then the cold energy of LNG is transferred to the
compartment of the refrigerated vehicle by the re-circulating
chilled air. The vaporized natural gas is superheated to near
ambient temperature in a superheater (5), and ows into the en-
gine of the refrigerated vehicle.
It should be noted that the cold energy recovery system , which
consists of LNG tank (1), Valves box (2), heat exchanger (3) and the
induced draft fan (4) as shown in Fig. 1, is a part of the fuel supply
system of the LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle. Therefore, the
cooling capacity of the refrigeration unit depends on the fuel con-
sumption rate. Matching characteristics of the demand and supply
of cold energy, which determine the proposed refrigerated vehicle
could be realized or not, are investigated theoretically and experi-
mentally in following sections as the focus of this study.
2.3. The available cooling capacity of the LNG refrigerated vehicle
This study takes a light-duty refrigerated vehicle with about
nine cubic meters of refrigerated compartment as research object.
Fig. 2. The engine performance graph of CY4102CNG.
Table 1
The natural gas consumption rates and the cold available at different power output.
Power (kW) 25 35 45 55 65 75
mNG (kg/h) 5.55 7.70 9.90 12.38 15.47 19.73
This refrigerated vehicle could be equipped with a natural gas en-
gine (CY4102CNG, Dongfeng Chaoyang Diesel Co., Ltd), the
maximum output power of which is 75 kW. Fig. 2 shows the per-
formance graph of the engine for full load. It is indicated that the
Specic Fuel Consumption (SFC) is about 228 g/kWh at idling time
(800 rpm). As revolutions rise, the SFC drops to be at its lowest
value, 220 g/kWh at about 1600 rpm. From there it rises steeply to
reach about 263 g/kWh at 3200 rpm. The natural gas consumption
rates (mNG) at different power outputs for full load condition are
listed in Table 1.
LNG is composed primarily of methane (more than 98%).
Therefore, the following analysis assumes that LNG contains only
methane. The thermophysical properties of methane are obtained
from the REFPROP (Lemmon et al., 2007). As shown in Fig. 1, the
state of LNG owing into the cold energy recovery system is
assumed to be saturated liquid at 0.2 MPa. The cryogenic cooling
capacity of LNG is used to chill the compartment of a LNG-fueled
refrigerated vehicle. The refrigerating temperature is chosen
based on a typical value of
20  C.
The available cooling capacity of the LNG-fueled refrigerated
vehicle equipped with the abovementioned natural gas engine, Qa
is calculated as follows:
Qa mNG hr
hs =3600 (1)
where mNG is the LNG consumption rate; hs is the enthalpy of
saturated liquid natural gas; hr is the enthalpy of natural gas at the
refrigerating temperature of the refrigerated vehicle.
The results of the available cooling capacity of the LNG-fueled
refrigerated vehicle under full-load condition are shown as Fig. 3.
2.4. The refrigeration unit equipped in a comparable mechanical
refrigerated vehicle
A non-independent type refrigeration unit, Carrier Viento 200
(by Carrier Transicold, China), is suitable for the refrigerated vehi-
cles with 20 m3 of the compartment. The parameters and refrig-
erating performance of Carrier Viento 200 are listed in Table 2.
Fig. 3. The available cooling capacity of the LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle under full-
load condition.
 H. Tan et al. / Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 20 (2014) 192e199
Table 2
The parameters and performances of Carrier Viento 200.
Model Refrigerant Cooling capacity (kW) Air ow rate (m3/h)
0  C/
20  C
Viento 200 R404A 2.0/1.025 700
As shown in Table 2, it is indicated that the Coefcient of Per-
formance (COP) of Carrier Viento 200 decreases with a drop in
refrigerating temperature. The cooling capacity of Viento 200 is
2.0 kW when the refrigerating temperature is 0  C, however it
declines to 1.025 kW at the refrigerating temperature of
20  C. In
comparison with the cooling capacity of the proposed refrigerated
vehicle as shown in Fig. 3, it is obvious that the refrigeration per-
formance of the novel refrigerated vehicle is superior to that of the
mechanical refrigeration unit.
It should be noted that the cooling capacity of the proposed
LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle is calculated on the assumption
that the refrigerating temperature being
20  C. The cooling ca-
pacity released by LNG exceeds that of Carrier Viento 200 when the
power output of the proposed natural gas engine (CY4102CNG) is
greater than 25 kW under the full-load operating condition, and the
LNG cold energy recovery system of the proposed refrigerated
vehicle could substitute the mechanical refrigeration unit. More-
over, the cooling capacity increases steeply with the increase in the
power output of CY4102CNG. It implies that the surplus cooling
capacity of the LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle would be consid-
erable in the case of high power output of the natural gas engine.
3. Experimental study on the performance of the self-
refrigeration system for LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicles
3.1. The experimental apparatus
The authors constructed a prototype of self-refrigeration system
for LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicles based on a refrigerated
compartment. A schematic drawing of the experimental apparatus
of the proposed refrigeration system is shown in Fig. 4. The
experimental system consists of a vacuum insulated, stainless steel
container to provide LNG, a heat exchanger for recovering LNG cold
energy, a thermostatic water bath, a gas turbine ow meter, a data
Fig. 4. The schematic diagram of the experimental equipment and apparatus.
195
Condenser Evaporator
Size (mm) Weight (kg) Size (mm) Weight (kg)
874  505  194 20 603  548  168 13
acquisition system, a personal computer, and a compartment of the
light-duty refrigerated vehicle.
The container can store up to 198 l of LNG. Liquid natural gas is
discharged from the container (1) by the action of pressure building
circuit. The compartment is a rectangular box of
3200 mm  1900 mm  1900 mm (L  W  H) constructed with
75 mm thick polyurethane foam boards, the thermal conductivity
of which is 0.027 W m
1 K
1. As shown in Fig. 5, a vertical star-
shaped nned tube heat exchanger (2), which has been used
widely in cryogenic liquids gasication, was used to vaporize LNG
and refrigerate the circulated air in the compartment. Eight 0.8 m
length star-shaped nned tube was welded end to end, and the LNG
owed along the inner tube, the air in the compartment was
circulated along the outside of the star-shaped nned tube by an
induced draft fan. The heat exchanger (2) was surrounded by a
rectangular air duct made of thin sheet iron. The induced draft fan
was amounted on the top of the air duct, therefore facilitating
natural convection of cooled air in the compartment.
3.2. The uncertainties of the measured parameters
T-type thermocouples with a calibrated accuracy of 0.2  C were
used to measure the temperatures of LNG, the circulated air and the
environment. A detailed view of the thermocouple locations is
shown in Fig. 6. To measure the temperature distributions of the
compartment,15 thermocouples were placed at three cross-sections
of the compartment as shown in Fig. 6. Two groups of thermocou-
ples (each group with three thermocouples) were placed at the inlet
and outlet of the air duct to measure the temperature difference of
the circulated air, and two thermocouples were placed at the inlet
and outlet of the star-shaped nned tube heat exchanger to measure
Fig. 5. The structure of the star-shaped nned tube heat exchanger.
196 H. Tan et al. / Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 20 (2014) 192e199

Fig. 6. Thermocouples locations of LNG-chilled refrigerated compartment.

the temperatures of the LNG before and after vaporization.
Furthermore, four thermocouples were set at the vertices of the
compartment to measure the temperature of the environment. The
ow rate of natural gas was measured by a gas turbine ow meter
with an accuracy of 0.75% of the reading and a measurement range
of 2e20 N m3/h. The pressures of LNG at inlet and outlet of the star-
shaped nned tube heat exchanger were measured by pressure
gauges with an accuracy of 0.04% and a measurement range of
0e1 MPa. An 80 channels Keithley type 2700 with the accuracy of
0.003% was used to measure the DCV output of thermocouples. The
measured voltage was converted into temperature automatically
and transmitted to PC. The uncertainties of the measured parame-
ters in this study are summarized in Table 3.
3.3. The experimental procedures
As shown in Fig. 3, the valve V1 was used to control the ow rate
of the LNG that enters the star-shaped nned tube heat exchanger
(2) from the LNG container. The pressure of the container was
adjusted by regulating the pressure building valve which controlled
the ow of the cryogenic liquid to be vaporized to build sufcient
driving pressure of the container. The cryogenic liquid was vapor-
ized in the heat exchanger (2) by the circulated air, and then su-
perheated in the constant temperature water bath (3). The ow
meter at the downstream of the water bath was used to measure
LNG ow rate. The circulated air was drafted from the bottom of the
air duct and vented close to the top of the compartment by the top-
mounted induced draft fan. Certain airow velocity at the fan
discharge was maintained, in order to supply the sufcient cooled
air to the rear end of the compartment. All the experiment data,
including temperatures, ow rate of the natural gas, inlet and outlet
pressures of LNG were recorded at an interval of 120 s.
dropping characteristics and temperature distribution character-
istics of the compartment was studied.
4.1. The performance of the self-refrigeration system for LNG-fueled
refrigerated vehicles
Five experiments were conducted to determine the correlation
between the LNG ow rate and the refrigerating temperature. The
pressure of the LNG was about 0.2 MPa, and the environmental
temperature (tm,w) was about 30  C for all experiments. The cryo-
genic liquid was saturated before it entered the refrigeration sys-
tem. The ow rate of LNG (mNG) varied from 4.602 kg/h to 7.773 kg/
h as shown in Table 4. For every experiment, the performance of the
proposed refrigeration system was determined when the temper-
atures of the compartment (tm,n) reached its steady state, in other
words, when the cooling capacity released by LNG exactly offset the
heat leak from the environment. Consequently, the cooling capacity
of the refrigeration system could also be regarded as the cold load
of the refrigerated compartment at the corresponding refrigerating
temperature.
The cooling capacity of the refrigeration system, Q0 was deter-
mined as follow,


Q0 mNG hs;in
hout 3600 (2)
where hs,in is the enthalpy of the saturated LNG, and hout is the
enthalpy of the natural gas outowing the refrigeration system.
The environmental temperature was determined by averaging
the measured value of the four different test points.
1X 4
tm;w t (3)
4 i1 i;w

4. Results and discussion The average temperature of the compartment was determined
as follow:
Following the experimental procedure described previously,
several tests of the performance of the self-refrigeration system 1 X5 X
3
tm;n ti;j (4)
were conducted under different LNG inlet conditions. This study 15
i1 j1
concentrated on the investigation of the interrelationship of LNG
consumption rate, available cooling capacity, refrigerating tem- The interrelationship of LNG consumption rate, available cooling
perature of the compartment. Furthermore, the temperature capacity and the refrigerating temperature of the refrigerated

Table 3 Table 4
The uncertainties of the measured parameters. The LNG inlet conditions and experimental results.

Measured parameters Uncertainty Range Test no. m/kg h
1 tin/ C tout/ C Q0/kW tm,w/ C tm,n/ C

The temperature of LNG 0.2  C
160 to
10  C 1 4.602
154.2
12.1 1.026 28.2
11.8
The temperature of refrigerated 0.2  C
50 to 30  C 2 5.607
154.4
24.0 1.218 30.9
23.4
compartment 3 5.709
153.6
24.4 1.228 28.1
23.6
The ow rate of LNG 0.15 N m3/h 2e20 N m3/h 4 6.322
154.2
32.7 1.416 30.2
31.2
The pressure of LNG 0.4 kPa 0.1e1 MPa 5 7.773
152.7
49.8 1.548 28.4
42.6
 H. Tan et al. / Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 20 (2014) 192e199
compartment is shown in Fig. 7. The cold load of the refrigerated
compartment increased with a decrease in refrigerating tempera-
ture obviously as shown in the gure. On the other hand, the very
amount of cooling capacity was provided to balance the cold load
by varying the ow rate of LNG. The lower refrigerating tempera-
ture is, the more amount of cooling capacity is needed. Conse-
quently, the more of LNG would be consumed. As shown in Fig. 7,
4.602 kg/h of LNG was vaporized to yield 1.026 kW of cooling ca-
pacity in order to maintaining the average temperature of the
compartment at
11.8  C. The consumption rate of LNG increased
dramatically with the refrigerating temperature decreasing.
7.773 kg of LNG was consumed per hour to provide adequate
cooling capacity which was used to balance the cold load of the
compartment at the refrigerating temperature of
42.6  C. In
contrast, the cooling capacity of a given VCR unit tted in con-
ventional refrigerated vehicles will sharply decrease with the
lowering its refrigerating temperature (as shown in Table 2).
By comparing the results shown in Tables 1 and 4, it could be
concluded that the refrigerated compartment temperature could be
dropped lower than
20  C when the power output of the engine
(CY4102CNG) was greater than 25 kW under the full-load operating
condition. From a practical point of view, the output power of the
engine could easily exceed 25 kW when the vehicle travels on the
road at normal speed (say, 60 km/h), and the proposed self-
refrigeration system could provide sufcient amount of cooling
capacity to maintain the temperature of the refrigerated compart-
ment lower than
20  C. It is worth noting that the surplus cooling
capacity has to be released to environment via a bypass heat
exchanger in order to maintain the refrigerated compartment at a
relatively steady temperature (e.g.
20  C). However, various
problems would arise when the refrigerated vehicle run on the
road. For example, the shortage of cooling capacity usually happens
in the cases of start-up and temporary parking due to the low LNG
consumption rate. In fact, this problem will occur in conventional
refrigerated vehicles mounted with diesel-driven VCR as well, due
to the low power output of engine. The management and control of
the supply of cooling capacity has been regarded as an effective
method to solve the abovementioned problem. The authors had
conducted a study on the cold storage with phase change material
to balance supply and demand of cooling capacity of LNG-fueled
refrigerated vehicles (Tan et al., 2010). The Cold Energy Storage
System would be an important part of the self-refrigeration system
for LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicles in practical applications.
Fig. 7. The correlation between the refrigeration performance and the ow rate of
LNG.
197
4.2. The temperature dropping characteristics of the refrigerated
compartment
Although it is not necessary to precool the refrigerated
compartment to its specied refrigerating temperature (for
example,
20  C), the temperature dropping characteristics of the
refrigerated compartment (as shown in Fig. 7) reected the per-
formance of the refrigeration system.
Fifteen temperature test points were carefully set at the inner
space of the refrigerated compartment as shown in Fig. 6. It can be
seen from Fig. 8 that the temperatures at every test points dropped
from the initial temperature (about 28  C) to
20  C in about
2.5 h when the LNG ow rate was 5.709 kg/h, the environment
temperature was about 28.1  C. According to a mandatory standard
drafted by Chinese Association of Refrigeration, the average tem-
perature of the refrigerated vehicle body must reach its specied
refrigerating temperature under the action of the refrigeration
system in 4 h. Obviously, the LNG-fueled refrigerating system
studied in this work outperforms the standard. As the liqueed
natural gas has very low boiling temperature and cools down the
circulated air, the large heat transfer temperature difference
resulted in more rapid temperature pulling-down than that for the
conventional vapor compression unit.
4.3. The temperature distribution characteristics of the refrigerated
compartment
The temperature eld uniformity is another important perfor-
mance merit of refrigerated vehicle which is closely related to the
storage quality of the perishable food. In this study, a top-mounted
induced draft fan (as shown in Fig. 6) was used to circulate the air
through the compartment in order to achieve a uniform tempera-
ture eld. In order to maintain a relatively stable refrigerated
temperature in the compartment, the temperature of the circulated
air in the outlet of the induced draft fan should be lower than that
of the refrigerated compartment to provide cooling capacity to
compensate the leaked heat. When the compartment was cooled
from the environmental temperature to the set point, there was a
considerable air temperature difference between the fan discharge
and the compartment. Thus, it is expected that the temperature
eld uniformity is worse in the cooling down mode than the
normal operating mode. The temperature dropping characteristics
of the refrigerated compartment under the experimental condition
of Test No. 3 are shown in Fig. 8. Here, the maximum temperature
Fig. 8. The temperature dropping characteristics of the refrigerated compartment of
Test No. 3.
198 H. Tan et al. / Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering 20 (2014) 192e199
Fig. 9. The maximum temperature difference of the refrigerated compartment during
the precooling process under the condition of Test No. 3.
difference between every test point and the average value during
the precooling process, which was dened as following, is shown in
Fig. 9.


DTmax max ti
j
tm;n
where ti-j denotes the temperature test points in the refrigerated
compartment as shown in Fig. 6, and tm,n is the average tempera-
ture of the refrigerated compartment.
As shown in Fig. 9, Dtmax was about 1  C at the beginning of the
precooling process. Then it increased with time and the maximum
value of Dtmax was 2.6  C at 90 s. Because the temperature of the
refrigerated compartment was close to its predened value (about

20  C), Dtmax decreased to about 2  C at the end of the precooling
process. It is expected that the temperature eld uniformity of the
refrigerated compartment will be better when the refrigerated
vehicle operates at its specic refrigerating temperature. In fact, the
results of this study showed that the maximum value of the Dtmax of
the compartment was less than 2.1  C for all the experiments at
their steady state condition as shown in Table 5. The results showed
that the temperature eld of the refrigerated compartment was
relative uniform, and it was of advantage to the storage of the
frozen products.
5. Conclusions
Self-refrigerated vehicle is a promising concept of high-
efcient recovery of LNG cold energy for a LNG-fueled vehicle.
The feasibility of this conception was analyzed theoretically and
validated experimentally. The performance of the self-
refrigeration system was investigated experimentally, and the in-
terrelations of the refrigerating temperature, the cooling capacity
and the consumption rate of LNG were studied carefully.
Furthermore, the temperature eld uniformity, the temperature
falling characteristics of the refrigerated compartment were dis-
cussed in this study.
The interrelationship of LNG consumption rate, available cooling
capacity, refrigerating temperature of the compartment was
Table 5
The maximum value of Dtmax for all the experiments ( C).
Test no. 1 Test no. 2 Test no. 3 Test no. 4
1.9 2.0 2.0 2.1
investigated experimentally. The temperature of the refrigerated
compartment could be dropped lower than
20  C when the LNG
consumption rate was greater than 5.607 kg/h. The calculation re-
sults showed that it could be achieved when the power output of
the proposed natural gas engine (CY4102CNG) is greater than
25 kW under the full-load operating condition, and the original
mechanical refrigeration unit (Carrier Viento 200) could be totally
substituted by the proposed self-refrigeration system.
The results of the temperature dropping characteristics study
showed that the temperatures of the compartment dropped from
its initial temperature (about 28  C) to
20  C in about
2.5 h when the LNG ow rate was 5.709 kg/h. It was superior to
the restricted value, 4 h, of a mandatory standard drafted by
Chinese Association of Refrigeration. The maximum temperature
difference between every test points and the average compart-
ment temperature was less than 2.6  C during the precooling
process, and is less than 2.1  C for all the experiments under the
steady state conditions.
It is worth noting that the cooling capacity increases steeply
with the increase in the power output of the natural gas engine.
This means the cooling capacity of the self-refrigeration system
would be surplus in the case of high power output of the natural gas
engine. In practical applications, the performance of LNG-fueled
refrigerated vehicles will be inuenced by many parameters, e.g.
the environmental condition, the airow patterns in the refriger-
(5)
ated compartment, the power output characteristics of the engine,
the storage pressure of LNG, and so on. In future work, it is
necessary to investigate the operation performance of a practical
LNG-fueled refrigerated vehicle.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China, China (No. 51306137), the National Key
Technology R&D Program of China, China (No. 2012BAA08B03) and
the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of
China, China (No.2012JQ7028).
Nomenclature
hout the enthalpy of the natural gas outowing the
refrigeration system, kJ/kg
hr the enthalpy of natural gas at the refrigerating
temperature, kJ/kg
hs, hs,in the enthalpy of the saturated LNG, kJ/kg
mNG the LNG consumption rate, kg/h
Qa the available cooling capacity of LNG, kW
Q0 the cooling capacity of the refrigeration system, kW
ti,j the temperature in the refrigerated compartment,  C
tm,w the environmental temperature,  C
tm,n the temperatures inside the compartment,  C
ORC organic Rankine cycle
PCTSU phase change thermal storage unit
SFC specic fuel consumption, g/kWh
TRUs transport refrigeration units
VCR vapor compression refrigeration
VCS vaporecompression system
Dtmax the maximum temperature difference,  C
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