CoolPack

CoolPack is an old collection of simulation models for refrigeration systems, such as cycle analysis, sizing of main components, energy analysis and optimization.

Introduction

CoolPack is no longer maintained. A large part of CoolPack is based on EES, and difficult to maintain.

CoolPack has limited availability of refrigerants, and sometimes compatibility issues with up-to-date Windows versions.

The main reason of keeping CoolPack available are tools for sizing of main components, cold room calculations etc., but the aim is to completely replace it with the new CoolTools software, for calculations with new refrigerants.

CoolTools does not have all the same functionality as CoolPack, but comes with a lot of the new refrigerants built-in, and receives regular updates. The idea is to make a more modular software with different components that can be updated individually. Ideally, this new software would be supported by the community and receive continuous upgrades.

Alternatives

If you are looking for transcritical CO2 system calculations, please have a look at Simple one-stage CO2.

For yearly calculations, and comparing different system designs for refrigeration and heat pumps, we offer the commercial software Pack Calculation Pro.

Lastly, if you are interested in secondary side calculations (e.g. water, glycol loops), SecCool may be worth taking a look at.

If you wish to proceed using CoolPack, please find the download link below.

About the project

CoolPack was developed by the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MEK), Section of Thermal Energy (TES), at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The development of CoolPack has until version 1.33 been financed by the Danish Energy Agency as part of the SysSim project. IPU hosts the CoolPack download pages.

Features of CoolPack

The following simulation purposes are covered:

Cycle analysis (process design)
System sizing
System simulation
Component calculations
Analysis of operating conditions
Transient simulation (cooling of an object/room)
Refrigerant calculations (property plots, thermodynamic & transport properties, comparison of refrigerants)
Life cycle cost (LCC)

As indicated by the name, CoolPack is a collection of simulation programs related to refrigeration. It consists of “Refrigeration Utilities”, “EESCoolTools”, and a transient element called “Dynamic”.

The first version of Refrigeration Utilities was released in 1995 and the program has since then been updated continuously with new refrigerants, more property plots etc.

EESCoolTools has been formally introduced as part of CoolPack (March 1999). The name EESCoolTools is a combination of the three words EES, Cool and Tools:

“EES” refers to the name of the program used to develop the simulation models (Engineering Equation Solver – EES).
“Cool” refers to that the programs 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 detailed system design and energy analysis.

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.

The dynamic elements are modeled and solved using a DAE-type simulation program called DALI. DALI was developed at the Refrigeration Laboratory (now part of Section of Thermal Energy at the Technical University of Denmark) in 1985. Originally, it was programmed in Pascal but the present release is updated to Delphi. So far we have included one transient element: simulation of the cooling of an object with the possibility of applying an on/off control of the compressor.

License

The CoolPack program is freeware and it may be distributed freely. For more information, see:

CoolPack license summary

Download

Note: Versions after v1.4.7 don’t contain functional changes, but only changes related to installation of the software.

Maarten
Winter

Senior Engineer, Thermodynamics and Energy Technology
M.Sc.

Phone: +45 45 16 04 24
Email: maaw@ipu.dk