The consumption of electrical and thermal energies in the residential building sector is growing fast and many strategies are being followed to overcome the energy demand in this sector. Among the various strategies, performance enhancement of refrigeration systems has been identified as one of the important areas for investigation. Due to the increase in the use of small-scale appliances and their impact on global energy requirements, specific research has to be focused on small scale systems with water-cooled condensers to reduce the energy consumption in residential buildings. In this study, the water-cooled condenser of a refrigeration system was connected to the prevailing water distribution system of a house with suitable changes in the existing arrangements. The proposed system was analysed for energy savings and environmental benefits. The experimental work was conducted in the tropical region, and the experimental findings indicated that the brazed plate condenser in small-scale refrigeration systems could decrease 21 to 27% of daily energy consumption. The total equivalent warming impact was found as 26.8% lower than that of conventional systems. Among the refrigerants, R290/R600a (45.2:54.8 – mass percentage) mixture showed 5.9% lower per day energy consumption and 8.9% higher COP than that of R134a. Compared to R134a, the R1234yf showed an increase of 4.7% and 7.3% in per day energy consumption and pull-down time respectively for all tested conditions. However, this small reduction in the performance of R1234yf may be tackled by optimizing the system components. Thus the building energy-efficiency could be improved by integrating the household refrigerator with the use of general water supply in a residential building.

住宅建筑领域中电能和热能的消耗正在快速增长，并且正在采取许多策略来克服该领域中的能源需求。在各种策略中，提高制冷系统的性能已被确定为重要的研究领域之一。由于小型设备的使用增加及其对全球能源需求的影响，因此必须将特定的研究重点放在带有水冷冷凝器的小型系统上，以减少住宅建筑的能耗。在这项研究中，将制冷系统的水冷冷凝器连接到房屋的现行配水系统，并对现有布置进行适当的更改。对提议的系统进行了节能和环境效益分析。在热带地区进行了实验工作，实验结果表明，小型制冷系统中的钎焊板式冷凝器可以减少21％至27％的日常能源消耗。发现总当量暖化影响比常规系统低26.8％。在制冷剂中，R290 / R600a（45.2：54.8-质量百分比）混合物的每日能耗比R134a低5.9％，COP则高8.9％。与R134a相比，R1234yf在所有测试条件下的每日能耗和下拉时间分别增加了4.7％和7.3％。但是，可以通过优化系统组件来解决R1234yf性能的这种小幅下降。