Distillation is the separation of components in a gas-liquid mixture using the difference in volatility. The distillation-type oil separator developed in this study combines the principles of traditional oil separation and distillation. The feed conditions of a constant pressure of 1 000 kPa in the tower

inlet temperature of 62 °C

and mass ratio of R134a and PAG of 7:3 were simulated using Aspen simulation software. The results show that the lubricating oil in the binary mixture can be removed by the distillation process. In this study an experimental setup was built to test the efficiency of the oil separator to verify its practical feasibility. The effects of the refrigerant circulation flow rate and the top cooling volume on the separation efficiency of the oil separator were investigated separately. The results showed that the oil separation efficiency was as high as 99.967% at a refrigerant mass flow rate of 7.5 g/s and a maximum cooling capacity of 200 W. From the experimental and simulation results

it was determined that introducing the distillation principle into the oil separator for the separation of the refrigerant-lubricant mixture can improve its separation efficiency. The separation efficiency of the distillation-type oil separator was 9.17 % higher than that of a conventional oil separator.