Detection method of ammonia leakage from liquid line of cold storage refrigeration system based on pressure and flow rate.

Ammonia is an environment-friendly natural refrigerant with good thermodynamic properties.So, it is widely applied in refrigeration systems especially for cold storage. However, it has fatal defects of flammabilityand toxicity, which can lead to harmful accidents whentheleakage occurs. Therefore it is crucialtodevelop theammoniadetection technology for safe and efficient operation of ammonia refrigeration systems. This article focuses on the detection method in theammonialiquid line betweentheaccumulator andtheevaporator. A test bench is built to conduct experiments of different leakage points and different leakage ratio. The detection method of ammonia leakage is proposed by analyzing the transient behaviorsof pressure and flowrate. A computer program to detect leakage and locate leakage point is developed with LabVIEW. Compared with the experimental results, the detection program shows good accuracyin the detection of small leakageas 5% and location estimation errorless than ±16%within 10 seconds.