Non-flammable, lower GWP alternatives to R-404A.

In an effort to comply with the worldwide regulations to reduce the environmental impact of refrigerants, there is large industrial movement to develop next generation refrigerants. In particular, alternatives to R-404A are gaining large interest, due to its wide usage in commercial refrigeration and relatively high GWP, among the HFCs currently in use. To this end, a lower GWP, non-flammable refrigerant ARM-32b has been developed as a replacement to R-404A. In this work, a drop-in test of ARM-32b was performed, and the capacity, performance, discharge temperature, and flow rate are presented along with the R-404A baseline. System results showed a potential for improved energy efficiency, while exhibiting similar capacity.

为遵循全球范围内旨在降低制冷剂环境影响的法规，工业界正大力推进下一代制冷剂的研发。尤其值得注意的是，R-404A的替代物正受到广泛关注——在目前使用的氢氟烃类（HFCs）中，R-404A因在商业制冷领域应用广泛且全球变暖潜能值（GWP）相对较高而成为焦点。为此，一种低全球变暖潜能值、不易燃的制冷剂ARM-32b已被开发出来，作为R-404A的替代品。本研究中，对ARM-32b进行了直接替换测试，并呈现了其容量、性能、排气温度及流量数据，同时给出了R-404A的基准数据。系统测试结果表明，ARM-32b在容量与R-404A相当的同时，具有提升能效的潜力。