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Copyright 2004 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes
only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in paper form without permission of
ASHRAE.
Reheat
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December 2004
Reheat Concepts
Warm Liquid Refrigerant
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35
Characteristic
Modes of Operation
Variable Performance
Reliability
Charge Migration
Operation at High
Ambient Temp.
Ambient Temp.
Indoor Humidity
Outdoor Airow
Table 1: Comparison of hot gas reheat concept with two-phase mixture reheat concept.
ASHRAE Journal
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December 2004
Condenser
Three-way Valve
Three-way
Valve
Condenser
Outdoor Air
Outdoor Air
Check
Valve
Compressor
Compressor
Reheat Coil
Reheat Coil
Check Valve
Evaporator
Evaporator
Expansion Device
Indoor Air
Expansion Device
Indoor Air
Figure 1 (left): Warm liquid refrigerant cycle. Figure 2 (right): Sequential hot gas refrigerant cycle.
December 2004
migration, a small bleed line with a solenoid valve and/or a hot gas bypass circuit
often are integrated into the design.
Two-Phase Refrigerant Mixture
Since the system subcooling is concurrently reduced, the evaporator performance diminishes accordingly. Obviously, the bypass ow reduction causes
just the opposite effect. As a result, the
designs for multiple market requirements
in terms of evaporator latent and system
sensible capacity are feasible, by means
of modulating or pulsating the condenser
bypass ow and without changing any of
the system components.
It becomes quite obvious that if the
conventional refrigerant path through the
condenser is closed, the proposed system
turns into the parallel hot gas design. On
the other hand, if the bypass around the
condenser is closed the system develops
into the warm liquid design.
Apparently, some exibility could be
achieved for all the previous designs if
the xed-position valves are substituted
with the regulating or pulsating flow
control devices. Unfortunately, all these
schemes offer signicantly lower agility in system design and may encounter
more complex control and reliability
issues. On the contrary, the two-phase
refrigerant system offers at least three
distinct modes of operation to satisfy a
wide range of environmental conditions
and load demands.
The system provides adequate operation for conventional cooling applications, for hot and humid environments
and for low sensible load cases, by alternating between these operating modes.
Finally, although implementation of the
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37
Three-way Valve
2a
Condenser
Three-way Valve 3a
Bypass
Valve
2
Condenser
Outdoor Air
Compressor
Compressor
Check
Valve
Reheat Coil
Reheat Coil
Evaporator
Expansion
Device
Check Valve
3
Indoor Air
Evaporator
Expansion Device
Indoor Air
Figure 3 (left): Parallel hot gas refrigerant cycle. Figure 4 (right): Two-phase mixture refrigerant cycle.
ASHRAE Journal
ashrae.org
December 2004
P
Three-way
Valve
Bypass
Valve
Three-way
Valve
Condenser
Outdoor Air
Solenoid Valve
Compressor
Solenoid
Valve
Expansion Device
Reheat Coil
Evaporator
Indoor Air
Figure 5 (left): P-h diagram for two-phase mixture refrigerant cycle. Figure 6 (right): Hybrid reheat schematic.
matics have been investigated, and it was found that the twophase mixture scheme provides the most adequate coverage
for a wide spectrum of potential applications.
This approach offers superior exibility in satisfying a wide
range of latent and sensible capacity demands. It also provides
an essential advantage of minimizing or even reversing undesirable tendencies in system performance deviation for a majority
of off-design conditions. The system functionality or component
reliability are not compromised if adequately addressed through
the appropriate control logic (e.g., activation of the head pressure control) and careful component design (reheat coil size
selection, condenser circuiting, etc.). The essential results and
conclusions of the analysis are summarized in Table 1, which
compares the two-phase mixture design with one of the most
popular hot gas reheat concepts.
To further improve system exibility, all the xed-position
two-way and three-way valves can be replaced with controllable
devices to regulate the amount of the refrigerant owing through
every branch of the dehumidication cycle. Additionally, all of
the designs can be used in the multicircuit systems where each
circuit is controlled independently.
Several hybrid concepts have been developed recently as well
in order to satisfy an even wider range of cooling, heating and
dehumidication requirements. These systems can operate in
several of the dehumidication modes discussed previously by
opening and closing the appropriate ow control devices to reroute the refrigerant through a particular branch of the cycle.
Figure 6 shows one such schematic where the two solenoid
valves and two shutoff valves (replacing typical check valves)
manage an appropriate refrigerant ow path in response to external sensible and latent load demands. Since the complexity in
design and control logic for these systems increases proportionally, any subsystem of the hybrid design can be implemented
and executed independently.
References
1. Lemmon, E.W., M.O. McLinden, M.L. Huber. 2002. NIST Reference Fluid Thermodynamic and Transport Properties REFPROP 7.0.
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Physical and Chemical
Properties Division.