Patent ID: 9644877
Date: 2017-05-09
CPC Classifications: F24F,F25B,Y02B

Claim:
1. An air-conditioning apparatus comprising: a refrigerant circuit in which an outdoor unit including a compressor whose frequency can be varied and an outdoor heat exchanger, and a plurality of indoor units each including an indoor heat exchanger are connected with refrigerant pipes, and which performs at least a cooling operation in which the outdoor heat exchanger functions as a condenser and also the indoor heat exchanger functions as an evaporator; an expansion valve provided between the outdoor heat exchanger and the indoor heat exchanger in the refrigerant circuit; and a controller configured to control frequency of the compressor so that an evaporating temperature reaches a target evaporating temperature during cooling operation, and, when refrigerant stagnation in the condenser of the outdoor unit is detected during cooling operation, implement a stagnation-resolving operation, wherein, the controller performs, as the stagnation-resolving operation, stagnation suppression control in which the target evaporating temperature is reduced within a range in which the evaporator does not freeze so as to increase a refrigerant circulation volume in the condenser, and, when implementation of the stagnation suppression control is not able to resolve stagnation, stagnation-avoidance priority control in which an opening degree of the expansion valve is controlled to be opened and also the target evaporating temperature is further reduced so as to further increase the refrigerant circulation volume.