The department is acquiring an environmentally and technologically advanced refrigeration cycle training system for use in the marine refrigeration laboratory. In addition to currently being an environmental requirement, the added data acquisition monitoring capability of such a unit expands its use for the courses offered in thermodynamics and the thermal/fluids laboratories. The refrigeration laboratory has responded to the challenge of introducing new refrigeration technology into its curriculum with the phase-out of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant K-12 and the introduction of refrigerant recovery in laboratory exercises beginning in the Fall of 1992. Since this initial change-out of refrigerant and the introduction of recovery, five new self-contained 7,000-btu/hr Marine Air System digital control reverse cycle air conditioners have been added to the laboratory. Through the proposed addition of a refrigeration cycle training system, which includes an environmentally acceptable refrigerant and data acquisition monitoring capability, the final phase for the advancement of technology in the refrigeration laboratory would be complete.
