Performance Characteristics of Refrigerants

Abstract

The increasing concern of climate change is the alarming issue to the designers, distributors and end time users of refrigeration and air conditioning systems. The continuous use of convectional refrigerants with chlorine molecules has been the bottleneck and drawbacks set to cover by research. Thus, the current study is designed to bridge some of these research gaps. Therefore, a detailed evaluation of refrigerants with the aid of a training simulator capable of analysing the thermo-physical properties and performance of some selected blend of refrigerants is the focal point of the study. The study creates decision policies on the selection of the best and ecofriendly refrigerant(s) to be used in the refrigeration/air conditioning systems. However, simulated results confirm HFC – R134a blend of refrigerants as the best due to its high proficient coefficient of performance (COP) value of 3.23 and 2.84 against 2.88 and 2.38; 1.33 and 2.53; 1.40 and 1.85 for R12, R22 and R600a respectively for thermostatic expansion valve (TEV) and Capillary tube operation modes. It also attests that R134a and R12 as established from the practical results are the most appropriate refrigerants for domestic and industrial heating respectively. Hence, results are justifiable and the process of this study could be used as tool for the selection process of refrigerants with zero ozone depleting potentials.