As a means to reduce environmental impact, regulations for the energy conservation of air
conditioners are being reinforced in many countries. As part of this campaign, it is becoming
common to assess energy-saving performance as annual energy consumption efficiency by
including intermediate seasons (i.e., spring and fall) in addition to summer and winter. One key
solution to this movement lies in the method of distributing the gas-liquid two-phase refrigerant to
several paths in the heat exchanger. To offer the maximum heat-exchange performance throughout
the year, we have developed a new distributor which can retain the distribution characteristics of
gas-liquid two-phase refrigerant against a wide range of conditions with variable loads (low to
high).
