- a collection of simulation tools for refrigeration - 
Tutorial - Version 1.46 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Authors: 
Arne Jakobsen 
Bjarne Dindler Rasmussen 
Morten Juel Skovrup 
Simon Engedal Andersen 
 
 
 
Department of Energy Engineering 
Technical University of Denmark (DTU) 
 
CoolPack@et.dtu.dk              www.et.dtu.dk/CoolPack 
 
May 2001 
 
 
 
 
 
SysSim
CoolPack – a collection of simulation programs for refrigeration 
 
Table of Contents 
 
1 
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 3 
2  DESCRIPTION OF COOLPACK ..................................................................................... 3 
3  COOLPACK CONTACT ................................................................................................... 5 
4 
INSTALLATION.................................................................................................................. 7 
5 
EXERCISES .......................................................................................................................... 8 
5.1 
Overview of exercises in this tutorial...................................................................................8 
Exercise 1: Fundamental concepts in CoolPack ..............................................................................9 
Exercise 2: Fundamental concepts in EESCoolTools ...................................................................10 
Exercise 3: Fundamental concepts in Refrigeration Utilities......................................................15 
Exercise 4: Short EESCoolTools exercise........................................................................................19 
Exercise 5: Short Refrigeration Utilities exercise...........................................................................21 
Exercise 6: Creation of property plots and drawing refrigeration cycles..................................23 
Exercise 7: One-stage cycle with dry expansion evaporator.........................................................27 
Exercise 8: One-stage cycle with flooded evaporator ....................................................................29 
Exercise 9: Designing a one-stage refrigeration system.................................................................31 
Exercise 10: Energy analysis of a system with on/off-type capacity control ............................36 
Exercise 11: Liquid flow in pipes (pressure drop and heat transfer) .........................................38 
Exercise 12: Transient cooling of goods in a refrigerated room ................................................40 
6  CONCEPTS, SHORTCUTS, AND OTHER HINTS.................................................... 42 
7  OVERVIEW OF PROGRAMS IN COOLPACK ........................................................... 44 
PROGRAMS IN REFRIGERATION UTILITIES............................................................................44 
PROGRAMS IN EESCOOLTOOLS: CYCLE ANALYSIS (C-TOOLS) ..........................................44 
PROGRAMS IN EESCOOLTOOLS: DESIGN ............................................................................44 
PROGRAMS IN EESCOOLTOOLS: EVALUATION (E-TOOLS) ................................................45 
PROGRAMS IN EESCOOLTOOLS: AUXILIARY TOOLS (A-TOOLS) .......................................45 
PROGRAMS IN DYNAMIC ........................................................................................................45 
7.1 
7.2 
7.3 
7.4 
7.5 
7.6 
 
Printouts  from  catalogs  (used  in  exercise  9)  can  be  found  in  the  separate 
appendix. 
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1  INTRODUCTION 
This  tutorial  gives  a  general  introduction  to  CoolPack  and  contains  a  number  of  exercises 
demonstrating how the programs in CoolPack should be used.  
The exercises are organized in groups representing the various types of investigations for which 
CoolPack can be used. The first exercises are introductory, focussing on how to use the various 
types of programs in CoolPack and how to navigate between them. The following exercises are 
more  detailed  and  aimed  at  demonstrating  the  use  of  CoolPack  for  analyzing  refrigeration 
systems. 
Once  you  have  become  familiar  with  the  programs  in  CoolPack,  we  hope  that  you  will  use  
CoolPack for solving the refrigeration-oriented tasks related to your job/education. If you have 
any comments or questions about CoolPack we encourage you to contact us – your comments 
and ideas will be very helpful to us in making CoolPack an even better program. 
 
2  DESCRIPTION OF COOLPACK 
The  development  of  CoolPack  started  in  spring  of  1998  as  a  part  of  a  research  project.  The 
objective of this project was to develop simulation models to be used for energy optimization 
of  refrigeration  systems.  The  users  of  these  models  would  be  refrigeration  technicians, 
engineers, students etc. in short all the persons with influence on the present and future energy 
consumption of refrigeration systems. 
The first idea was to make a general and comprehensive simulation program that would give 
the user all the flexibility he/she could wish for in terms of handling many different system 
designs  and  investigation  purposes.  Some  of  the  characteristics  of  very  general  and  flexible 
programs are that they require many user inputs/selections and that their numerical robustness 
is  rather  low.  Experience  with  this  type  of  programs  has  shown  that  this  type  of  simulation 
programs is far from ideal for the main part of the users mentioned above. Since most of these 
users have limited time for carrying out the investigation, general and comprehensive programs 
will in many cases be very ineffective to use and they are therefore often discarded by the users. 
The  idea  behind  the  development  of  CoolPack  is  different  from  the  idea  described  above. 
Instead of creating a large, general and comprehensive simulation program we have chosen to 
create a collection of small, easy to use, and numerically robust simulation programs.  
The typical simulation program in CoolPack deals with only on type of refrigeration system 
and  has  a  specific  investigation  purpose.  It therefore only requires the user inputs/selections 
necessary  to  describe  operating  conditions  etc.  and  not  any  inputs  for  describing  the  system 
design or for specifying the input/output structure associated with the simulation purpose. 
When  developing  the  programs  for  CoolPack  we  have  focused  on  making  the  underlying 
system models as simple, relevant and numerically robust as possible. We have preserved some 
flexibility in that the user can select refrigerant and also specify inputs (like pressure) in more 
than one way (saturation temperature or pressure). 
The programs in CoolPack covers the following simulation purposes: 
•  Calculation of refrigerant properties (property plots, thermodynamic & thermophysical 
data, refrigerant comparisons) 
•  Cycle analysis – e.g. comparison of one- and two-stage cycles 
• 
System  dimensioning  –  calculation  of  component  sizes  from  general  dimensioning 
criteria 
System  simulation  –  calculation  of  operating  conditions  in  a  system  with  known 
components 
• 
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•  Evaluation  of  operation  – evaluation of system efficiency and suggestions for reducing 
the energy consumption 
•  Component calculations – calculation of component efficiencies 
•  Transient  simulation  of  cooling  of  an  object  –  e.g.  for  evaluation  of  cooling  down 
periods 
 
To make it easier to get an overview of the programs in CoolPack we have chosen to divide the 
programs into three main groups (Refrigeration Utilities, EESCoolTools and Dynamic). Figure 
2.1 gives an overview of the content in these groups. 
 
Refrigeration
    Utilities
Refrigerant property
plots and cycles
Refrigerant calculator
Secondary fluid
calculator
Psychrometric charts
CoolPack
EESCoolTools
Dynamic
Cooling down of an
object/room.
(One-stage system)
Cycle analysis
System dimensioning
System simulation
Operation analysis
Component calculations
Refrigerant properties
Comparison of
refrigerants
 
Figure 2.1: Overview of the main groups in CoolPack. 
 
The group Refrigeration Utilities consist of 3 refrigerant oriented programs, primarily used 
for calculating the properties of primary and secondary refrigerants, creating property plots for 
primary refrigerants (like p-h, T-s and h-s diagrams) and for calculating the pressure drop for 
flow of secondary refrigerants in pipes. Furthermore, it is possible to create property plots for 
humid air (psychrometric charts). 
The programs in Refrigeration Utilities group have been released previously as independent programs. 
The  first  versions  of  the  programs  were  released  in  1996  and  they  have  since  then  been  expanded 
significantly with new refrigerants, more property plots etc. Apart from the built in property functions 
the current version can also use the very accurate property functions used in the RefProp program. If 
you  have  RefProp  ver.  6.01  you  will  now  be  able  to  create  high  quality  property  plots  based  on 
RefProp data for refrigerants. Se the on-line help in the programs. 
 
The  group  EESCoolTools  contains  a  large  collection  of  programs  for  both  refrigeration 
systems and components. We have chosen to divide this group into four subgroups as shown 
on Figure 2.2. The groups also represent the four phases of designing a refrigeration system. 
The  programs  in  these  four  groups  have  almost  the  same  type  of  user  interface,  making  it 
easier to combine their use and also use them for comparisons.  
The name EESCoolTools consists of the three words EES, Cool and Tools:  
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•  "EES"  refers  to  the  name  of  the  program  we  have  implemented  our  simulation  models  in 
(Engineering Equation Solver - EES). EES is developed by S.A. Klein and F.L. Alvarado, and is 
sold by F-Chart Software in Wisconsin, USA. You can get more information about EES and F-
Chart Software on the Internet at www.fchart.com 
•  "Cool" refers to the fact, that the simulation models are related to the area of refrigeration. 
•  "Tools" refers to that the programs are thought to be tools enabling you to make faster and more 
consistent (energy) design and analysis. 
 
 Cycle Analysis
(C-Tools)
Selection of cycle and
specification of
primary parameters
Dimensioning
(D-Tools)
Use of dimensioning
criteria for dimensioning
of components
System Simulation
(S-Tools)
Calculation of operating
conditions with selected
components
Evaluation
(E-Tools)
Energy analysis based on
measurements
Figure 2.2: EESCoolTool subgroups 
 
 
The group named Dynamic contains the dynamic programs in CoolPack. So far only a single 
program  is  available.  With  this  program  it  is  possible  to  simulate  the  cooling  down  of  an 
object/room under various conditions and with on/off-capacity control of the compressor. 
The  dynamic  element  is  modeled  and  solved  using  a  DAE  solver  application  called  WinDALI. 
WinDALI  is  based  on  the  DALI-program  developed  in  1985,  at  what  at  that  time  was  called  the 
Refrigeration  Laboratory  at  the  Technical  University  of  Denmark  (now  a  part  of  Department  of 
Energy Engineering). The present version of WinDALI is freeware an is well documented. If you are 
interested  in  making  your  own  dynamic  simulation  models,  you  are  welcome  to  have  a  copy  of 
WinDALI – all you have to do is to contact us. 
The individual programs in CoolPack are described further in Chapter 6 of this tutorial. 
 
3  COOLPACK CONTACT 
CoolPack  was  developed  as  part  of  a  research  project  called  SysSim  (an  abbreviation  for 
“Systematic Modeling and Simulation of Refrigeration Systems”). This project was financed by 
the Danish Energy Agency. The project administrator is Arne Jakobsen (aj@mek.dtu.dk). 
CoolPack  will  be  updated  continuously,  and  you  will  always  be  able  to  download  the  latest 
version  from  www.et.dtu.dk/coolpack.  Here  you  can  also  find  news  about  the  program  and 
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technical  support.  CoolPack  is  freeware  and  you  are  welcome  to  pass  on  you  copy  of  the 
program to colleagues and friends. We encourage all who use CoolPack to register so that we 
can inform them about new versions and CoolPack-related arrangements. 
In the process of updating and expanding CoolPack we need your feedback. All comments and 
suggestions  are  welcome  and  are  also  highly  appreciated!  General  questions,  comments  or 
requests for support should be directed to CoolPack@et.dtu.dk or they can be faxed to us on 
+45 4593 5215.  
The  development  of  CoolPack  is  performed  by  Team  CoolPack  consisting  of  the  following 
members: 
Name 
Arne Jakobsen 
Bjarne Dindler Rasmussen 
Morten Skovrup 
Simon Engedal Andersen 
Telephone 
+45 4525 4129 
 
+45 4525 4120 
 
E-mail 
aj@mek.dtu.dk 
 
ms@mek.dtu.dk 
 
 
The members of Team CoolPack can also be contacted directly by telephone or e-mail – the 
numbers and addresses can be found in the table above.  
You can contact all team members through the mail: coolpack@et.dtu.dk 
 
 
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