A study on optimizing the energy consumption of a cold storage cabinet

•Energy efficiency of household refrigerators is investigated.•The investigated parameters are airflow rate and evaporator temperature.•Experiments are carried out and a simple computational model is built.•Heat gain calculations of the refrigerator cabinet are also included in the model.•The model outputs are validated by the experiment results. Refrigerators are cold storage cabinets used to store food. Run time ratio is an important factor contributing to the refrigerator energy consumption. An experimental study is presented, in which the parameters affecting the run time ratio of the freezer compartment of a “no-frost” household refrigerator is taken into account. Evaporator temperature and air flow rate are chosen as investigated parameters. The experiments are conducted in a setup where these parameters can be controlled. The freezer compartment is loaded with test packages according to the relevant refrigerator energy consumption testing standard. A simple mathematical model is built by which the run time ratio of a freezer compartment can be calculated according to other input parameters (such as insulation, and volume). The total energy consumption of a two-door refrigerator having fresh food storage and freezer compartments can also be calculated using this mathematical model. The compressor and fan power consumption data are used to estimate energy consumption using the run time ratio. The experimental results are compared with the results obtained from the mathematical model for validation. The effects of the chosen parameters on the refrigerator total energy consumption are presented.