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Modern Engineering Thermodynamics

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564 CHAPTER 14: Vapor and Gas Refrigeration Cycles<br />

WHO INVENTED THE “TV DINNER”?<br />

By the 1930s, General Foods had a few frozen meals on the<br />

market (such as Irish stew), but the first individual frozen<br />

meals did not appear until World War II. In 1945, Maxson<br />

Food Systems Inc. introduced three-part meals called Strato-<br />

Plates for military airplane passengers. For the next ten years,<br />

food engineers worked to make frozen meals more appealing.In1954,C.A.Swanson&<br />

Sons (a Campbell Soup<br />

company) introduced the name TV Dinner for its new<br />

frozen meals that could be eaten while watching television<br />

(Figure 14.21). They were an instant success at 98 cents each,<br />

with 10 million TV dinners sold in 1955 and 214 million in<br />

1960. In 1990, manufacturers introduced over 650 new<br />

frozen dishes, resulting in over 2 billion frozen meals sold<br />

per year by the mid 1990s. Today, the TV dinner has<br />

morphed into the $4 billion frozen food industry.<br />

The TV dinner allowed families to gather around the television<br />

set to share their meals, just as they used to do while<br />

gathered around the dinner table. Commercially prepared<br />

frozen foods vastly simplified the art of meal preparation<br />

and significantly contributed to changing women’s rolein<br />

society by promoting the sharing of meal preparation tasks<br />

by all members of the family.<br />

FIGURE 14.21<br />

TV Dinner.<br />

Condenser<br />

Q H<br />

Ammonia plus<br />

hydrogen gas<br />

mixture<br />

Evaporator<br />

Hydrogren<br />

Q L gas return<br />

Absorber<br />

Gas<br />

separator<br />

A weak<br />

solution of<br />

ammonia<br />

in liquid<br />

water<br />

Ammonia vapor<br />

plus liquid water<br />

pumped by percolation<br />

A strong solution<br />

of ammonia<br />

dissolved in<br />

liquid water<br />

Gas<br />

generator<br />

Q generator<br />

FIGURE 14.22<br />

A gas-powered absorption refrigerator requires no electricity.<br />

silent, and did not require electricity to operate. This technology was first marketed in the United States in 1927<br />

by Electrolux in Evansville, Indiana. Absorption refrigeration was popular in the household until the 1950s,<br />

when highly efficient, cascaded, electric-powered, vapor-compression refrigerators dominated the market. Because

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