Investigations on automobile air conditioners working with R134a and R430A as an alternative

Abstract

The refrigerant R134a is the most widely used in automobile air conditioning due to its favorable thermodynamic thermo physical and chemical properties However R134a is having high global warming potential of 1430 According to Kigali agreement 2016 the refrigerants with high global warming potential needs to be phased out soon Hence it is essential to identify a sustainable refrigerant option to phase out R134a in automobile air conditioners In this research work the binary near azeotropic mixture composed of R152a and R600a in the ratio of 76:24 by mass is proposed as possible alternative to phase out R134a in automobile air conditioners American Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers ASHRAE has designated the mixture as R430A The thermo physical and thermodynamic characteristics of R430A are found to be good when compared to R134a Moreover R430A is compatible with all the components of automobile air conditioners The temperature glide of R430A is found to be 0 2 The R430A has global warming potential of 107 which is significantly lower when compared to R134a An automobile air conditioner experimental setup with necessary instrumentation was developed to investigate the thermodynamic performance of R134a and R430A The automobile air conditioner experimental setup is equipped with 2 25 kW variable frequency drive electric motor to vary the compressor speed The experiments have been carried out to investigate the performance of an automobile air conditioner under the influence of seven operating parameters such as compressor speed ambient temperature ambient relative humidity air velocity approaching the condenser solar radiation passenger load and evaporator air velocity newline