Most refrigerants used in modern cooling equipment have a high potential for increasing global warming. Refrigerants like R-134a, while an improvement over earlier substances like R22, are not helpful..
Most refrigerants used in modern cooling equipment have a high potential for increasing global warming. Refrigerants like R-134a, while an improvement over earlier substances like R22, are not helpful in the fight against Climate Change. Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a measure of the propensity of a substance to trap heat in the atmosphere, pegged to a value of 1.0 for CO2 . Synthetic refrigerants will have GWP orders of magnitude greater. For example, R-134a has a GWP 1430 and R-1234yf has a GWP of 1386 (High-GWP Refrigerants). R-744 is CO2 used as a refrigerant in direct expansion, cascade refrigeration (multiple compressors), and either as a primary or secondary refrigerant. These R-744 plants will operate from 400-1000 PSI, compared to the R-134 operating pressures around 15-40 PSI. Consequently, construction size and durability is limiting. This study will investigate the current and future viability of CO2 air conditioning systems in vehicles. Some challenges include the weight, energy consumption, and size of the current CO2 systems.
