The frosting is a phenomenon most detrimental to the efficiency of refrigeration systems. The accumulation of frost blocks the airflow, deteriorating the cooling capacity and the coefficient of performance. The commercially available refrigeration systems use a blind and periodic defrosting cycle without any quantification of frost, which leads to lower efficiencies. Considering the new and tougher energy regulations in the refrigerators, nowadays increasing the efficiencies of the refrigerators becomes more critical. In this article, a new hybrid frost detection – defrosting system (HFDDS) is proposed that comprises of a novel photo-capacitive sensing technique and a dual-purpose additively manufacturable sensor and defrosting heater. The HFDDS can detect the formation of frost, measures the thickness of frost from 1.3 to 8 mm with a 5% margin of error, and triggers a defrosting response once a critical frost thickness is attained. The HFDDS is targeted to provide a defrosting on-demand instead of the inefficient blind and periodic defrosting cycles.

结霜是最不利于制冷系统效率的现象。霜的积聚会阻碍气流，从而降低冷却能力和性能系数。商业上可获得的制冷系统使用盲目且周期性的除霜循环而没有任何霜的量化，这导致较低的效率。考虑到冰箱中新的和更严格的能源法规，如今提高冰箱的效率变得越来越关键。在本文中，提出了一种新的混合式霜检测-除霜系统（HFDDS），该系统包括一种新颖的光电容传感技术以及一个两用可加性制造的传感器和除霜加热器。HFDDS可以检测霜的形成，从1开始测量霜的厚度。3至8毫米，误差为5％，一旦达到临界霜厚度，就会触发除霜响应。HFDDS旨在按需提供除霜，而不是效率低下的盲目和定期除霜循环。