01/10/2020
History of Refrigeration
In 1844, Dr. John Gorrie designed the first commercial reciprocating refrigerating machine in the
United States. The hermetically sealed motor-compressor was first developed by General Electric
Company for domestic refrigerators and sold in 1924.
Carrier invented the first open-type gear-driven factory-assembled, packaged centrifugal chiller
in 1922 in which the compressor was manufactured in Germany and the hermetic centrifugal
chiller, with a hermetically sealed motor-compressor assembly, in 1934. The direct-driven hermetic
centrifugal chiller was introduced in 1938 by The Trane Company. Up to 1937, the capacity of centrifugal chillers had increased to 700 tons.
During the 1930s, one of the outstanding developments in refrigeration was the discovery by
Midgely and Hene of the nontoxic, nonflammable, fluorinated hydrocarbon refrigerant family
called Freon in 1931. Refrigerant-11 and refrigerant-12, the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), became
widely adopted commercial products in reciprocating and centrifugal compressors.
The first aqueous-ammonia absorption refrigeration system was invented in 1815 in Europe. In
1940, Servel introduced a unit using water as refrigerant and lithium bromide as the absorbing solu-
tion. The capacities of these units ranged from 15 to 35 tons (52 to 123 kW). Not until 1945 did Carrier introduce the first large commercial lithium bromide absorption chillers. These units weredeveloped with 100 to 700 tons (352 to 2460 kW) of capacity, using low-pressure steam as the heat
source.
Positive-displacement screw compressors have been developed in the United States since the
1950s and scroll compressors since the 1970s because of their higher efficiency and smoother rotary
motion than reciprocating compressors. Now, the scroll compressors gradually replace the reciprocating compressors in small and medium-size refrigeration systems. Another trend is the development of
more energy-efficient centrifugal and absorption chillers for energy conservation.
