Transport refrigeration system and methods for same to address dynamic conditions

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10107536-B2
Application number	US-201013511800-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 9, 2010
Priority date	Dec 18, 2009
Publication date	Oct 23, 2018
Grant date	Oct 23, 2018

Abstract

In a refrigeration system having a compressor, a heat rejection heat exchanger, a heat absorption heat exchanger, and a controller for controlling the same, embodiments of a system, apparatus and methods for the same can control at least one refrigeration system component such as an expansion valve responsive to dynamic system conditions.

First claim

We claim:

1. In a transport refrigeration unit having a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator, an economizer, a second expansion valve coupled between the economizer and the compressor, and a controller, and a first expansion valve upstream of the evaporator, a process comprising:
detecting a capacity increase mode transition for the economizer; and
adaptively controlling an injection flow rate for the economizer during at least a portion of the capacity increase mode transition in response to one of available pressure, available power or available current to the transport refrigeration unit;
wherein the adaptively controlling comprises selectively operating the second expansion valve through a transition from a first non-zero flow rate to a second higher non-zero flow rate using system conditions to control a rate of transition from the first non-zero flow rate to the second higher non-zero flow rate responsive to the capacity increase mode transition.

2. The process of claim 1 , where the system conditions set an adaptive speed of transition from the first flow rate to the second flow rate or the system conditions set a prescribed time period of transition from the first flow rate to the second flow rate.

3. The process of claim 2 , where the adaptive control is an adaptive PID control of an economizer gas injection valve, where the available power is power remaining to the transport refrigeration unit under a system threshold.

4. The process of claim 1 , where the first flow rate is a non-zero injection flow rate less than 100%, the second flow rate is 100% injection flow rate, and the prescribed time period for transitioning from the first flow rate to the second flow rate is greater than ten seconds.

5. The process of claim 1 , where the transition is step wise, intermittent, linear, non-linear, gradually, or continuous and where the prescribed time period is based on a throughput interval of the evaporator or the prescribed time period is 15-300 seconds, and where the step wise transition is a 10% increase every twenty seconds, every ten seconds, or every five seconds.

6. The process of claim 1 , where the selectively operating comprises soft-starting the economizer.

7. The process of claim 1 , where the selectively operating comprises proactively controlling a transition to a high capacity mode of the transport refrigeration unit, where detecting the mode transition detects energizing of a vapor flow of an economized transport refrigeration unit.

8. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer usable storage medium to store a computer readable program that, when executed on a computer, causes the computer to perform operations to operate a transport refrigeration unit, the operations comprising:
operate the transport refrigeration unit in a first mode;
control an economizer to transition the transport refrigeration unit to a higher capacity mode; and
increase gradually a gas flow rate from the economizer to over a prescribed time at said transition;
wherein the increasing the gas flow rate from the economizer comprises selectively operating a second expansion valve through the transition from a first non-zero flow rate to a second higher non-zero flow rate using system conditions to control a rate of transition from the first non-zero flow rate to the second higher non-zero flow rate responsive to the transition.

9. The computer program product of claim 8 , where the operations comprising increase gradually a gas flow rate includes increasing from a 0% injection flow rate to a 100% injection flow rate.

Assignees

• Senf Jr Raymond L
• Reason John R
• Carrier Corp

Inventors

• Senf Jr Raymond L
• Reason John R

Classifications

• F25B2600/2513

  Expansion valves · CPC title

• F25B2600/2509

  Economiser valves · CPC title

• Y02B30/743

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• F25B49/02 Primary

  for compression type machines, plants or systems · CPC title

• F25B2400/13

  Economisers · CPC title