Sustainable refrigerants for comfort and refrigeration.

This paper reviews the recent investigation on the performance of the most promising refrigerants to replace today HFCs used in comfort and refrigeration applications in order to meet the F-gas regulation.

Theoretical and experimental results with various scroll compressors using R32, HFOs blends and R290 will be discussed. The experimental results show that R32, R454B and R452B are good refrigerant candidates to replace R410A with a trade-off between GWP, efficiency, flammability, cost and where components and systems require less development effort compared to other solutions. Their long-term viability will certainly depend on how many applications (like commercial and industrial refrigeration, residential comfort) will convert to natural or synthetic refrigerants with a GWP below 150.

R454C and R455A are good performance refrigerants and could be a long-term solution in refrigeration and residential heating applications where natural refrigerants cannot be used for safety, efficiency or cost reasons. These refrigerants have a high glide temperature during the phase process change at constant pressure of which one can take advantage if the system design permits it.

Other aspects such as the need of new lubricants, operating map limitations and compressor design changes to meet the safety requirements and European norms are also addressed.