Skip to main content.

More technical information

The Ministry for the Environment appreciates the opportunity to use this article, which first appeared as a column in the Institute of Refrigeration and Heating and Air Conditioning Journal of July/August 2002.

IRHACE Journal July/August 2002, p.23, “IIR News” (with references added) By Simon J Lovatt (International Journal of Refrigeration)

One of the highest-profile responsibilities of the IIR is publication of the International Journal of Refrigeration. This journal is published for the IIR by Elsevier Science eight times per year and each issue typically contains eight to 15 articles. As well as original research papers, the International Journal of Refrigeration also includes review articles, papers presented at IIR Commission Meetings, short communications and letters describing preliminary results and experimental details, and letters to the Editor on recent areas of discussion and controversy. Other features include forthcoming events, conference reports and book reviews. Articles are published almost always in English (there are a few in French each year) with titles, abstracts, captions and the Institute news section in both languages.

Although a few of the articles can be impenetrable to persons not working in exactly the topic area of the article, most are quite readable and many are of real value to anyone who would like to keep up-to-date with new developments in refrigeration technology. The January 2002 issue (Volume 25, No. 1) included 15 articles on a wide variety of refrigeration-related topics and I have highlighted two that you may find of interest. If you would like to read any of these articles, the journal is available in several university libraries and the IRHACE Centre will be able to help you obtain them. If you would like to receive free contents pages by E-mail for this or any other Elsevier journal, you can register at http://contentsdirect.elsevier.com/AboutContentsDirect.html.

Comparative analysis of automotive air conditioning systems operating with CO2 and R134a - Brown et al. (2002)

CO2 has been suggested as an alternative to R134a in air-conditioning systems because the global warming potential of R134a is 1300 times that of CO2. This was particularly important for automotive air-conditioning because of the relatively high leakage rates in such systems. The authors of this article set out to compare the two refrigerants for an identical automotive application, using a simulation technique to avoid the errors that could be introduced by subtle differences in hardware design in an experimental system. Their results indicated that the COP of the CO2 system was 21% lower than that of the R134a system with an ambient temperature of about 32°C, and that this difference got worse as the ambient temperature got higher.

Refrigeration and the environment – issues and strategies for the future - McMullan (2002)

This review article discussed the problems to be faced by the refrigeration industry with respect to global warming and ozone depletion, including the choice and availability of working fluids, the increased complexity of using fluid mixtures and the risk of losing the simplicity in design and construction that was possible with CFC single fluids. Among many interesting points, this review provided an interesting complement to the CO2 vs. R134a article by showing that the total equivalent warming impact of a CO2 system that was even 10% less efficient than a R134a system could be worse than that of the R134a system. This would result from the greater amount of carbon dioxide that would be released by burning fossil fuels to generate the additional energy needed to run the less efficient refrigeration system. This was an interesting lesson that all of us who design refrigeration systems should bear in mind – the efficiency of the system can have a more significant impact on global warming than the refrigerant that we use.

References

Brown, J.S., Yana-Motta, S.F. & Domanski, P.A. (2002) Comparitive analysis of automotive air conditioning systems operating with CO2 and R134a, International Journal of Refrigeration, 1, 25, 19-32.

McMullan, J.T. (2002) Refrigeration and the environment - issues and strategies for the future,International Journal of Refrigeration, 1, 25, 89-99.

Last updated: 16 September 2004