A Study on the Fluid H in Automotive Air Conditioning System as an Alternative Refrigerant

It is time to prepare the phaseout of R134a, the current refrigerant, in automotive air conditioning system because the EC deadline has been coming with new platform vehicles in 2011 and all vehicles by 2017. Until now a high-pressure carbon dioxide($CO_2$) system is the leading replacement of R134a in European auto-makers but there is no firm agreement in the world automotive market. Recently three new fluids have been announced as the possibilities from Honeywell, DuPont and INEOS Fluor. The new alternative refrigerant should meet the requirements like non flammable, non toxic, no ozone depletion effect and low GWP(under 150 to meet EC regulation). The objectives of this paper are to review the fluid H from Honeywell, the more possible alternative refrigerant in 3 new fluids, compare the properties of R134a & fluid H and see the possibility as a replacement of R134a. In this experimental paper we ran and reviewed the cooling performance data in the bench system, the vehicle and the field test. We found the possibility of fluid H system to meet the R134a system performance with some hardware modifications but agreed that it is still needed to study about the long term safety, environmental effects, material compatibilities and so on.

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