Elbel publishes first Virtual Special Issue for journal

4/5/2016 MechSE Communications

  Stefan Elbel, an Adjunct Assistant Professor working in MechSE’s Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (

Written by MechSE Communications

 
Stefan Elbel, an Adjunct Assistant Professor working in MechSE’s Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (ACRC), was recently invited by the International Journal of Refrigeration (IJR) to write the first Virtual Special Issue (VSI) for the journal. 
 
The basis for the first VSI, “Recent Developments in Advanced Ejector Technology,” is an invited review paper that Elbel co-authored in 2015 with his PhD student, Neal Lawrence, on refrigerant ejectors. Ejectors are smart expansion devices that reduce losses in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems and improve overall energy efficiency. Elbel has worked on ejector refrigeration systems with his students in the ACRC for the last 10 years. 
 
Elbel and Lawrence present a summary of the different aspects discussed in their article and cite the relevant papers they considered. 
 
According to the journal’s website, VSIs are based on invited review articles published in the IJR, and they extract and discuss context between recently published, high-level articles in the field of the review. IJR’s aim is to make research more accessible to the public through the help of leading researchers in a particular field of interest. The papers cited by the VSI are offered free of charge for three months to enable distribution of knowledge to a wider audience.
 
Elbel’s research is experimental and numerical, in the areas of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. His focus is on energy conversion systems with specialization in vapor compression technology using synthetic and natural refrigerants. He conducts both fundamental and applied research on components and systems used in mobile, residential, commercial, and industrial heating and cooling applications.
 
He has been researching transcritical carbon dioxide cooling and heating cycles for a large variety of applications for more than 15 years. He has worked extensively on designing and improving refrigerant ejector systems to increase the energy efficiency of vapor compression cycles. His interest in expansion work recovery has been extended to vortex tubes that offer attractive improvement potentials at very low cost. He is also working on waste heat recovery systems that allow the efficient generation of waste heat driven cooling as a promising alternative to absorption cooling systems.
 
Elbel earned his MS (2003) and PhD (2007) in mechanical engineering at Illinois. He joined the MechSE department in 2010 as a visiting lecturer. 

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This story was published April 5, 2016.