home a/c efficiency

Linde (a compressed gas company) web site emphasizes that these hydrocarbons have no ozone-hole or greenhouse-gas effects. Former statement is true, latter is mostly true*. They also say both are flammable and over what concentration ranges they are explosive.

To only disclose the former points would be deceptive IMHO.

*Any hydrocarbons in atmosphere will react with hydroxyl radicals and thus indirectly slow decomposition of methane, which absorbs infrared very strongly. I suppose they are near the line of what they can actually say, but not sure.

But if one actually says (for example) 1,1,1.2 tetrafluoroethane instead of R134a, I understand it better. Probably a minority view.

 

Common refrigerants we currently in use in residential HVAC R410 it was the replacement mandated to replace R22 100% changeover in 2010 . Just like in the automotive industry the changeover from R12 in 1994 to R134 , as for R 290 and R 600 they are used worldwide for many decades with no problems because the quantity is so small a small leak into a large living room since all residents have a natural exchange of air is like having a small leak out of a handful of BIC lighter‘s .

 

My reading is that isobutane causes problems if it is incorrectly use to refill compressors that are not made for it. Further that such problems are rare but non zero. So I'm probably in between your and Georgina's position.

For the long list of other 'R's' matter of interest to me is presence of chlorine atoms. Perhaps that is all simply summarized somewhere.

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Concerning isobutane lighters I was shocked to see them disposed of in a large (almost-closed) plexiglass box. Security line at an Asian airport. Walked right by the thing, in fear of one or two leakers.

 

Oh bromine as well as chlorine, but I guess that is not in fridges.

 

I mention this table but it has a few data gaps:

Refrigerants - Environmental Properties

 

Still, I don't believe it with flammable refrigerants

Thomas Midgely, Jr. said that tetra ethyl lead was not dangerous and promoted its use in gasoline for many years.

At one time, kids played with mercury and carbon tetra chloride was used in fire extinguishers

 

Midgely was also Freon. Recanted about lead toxicity, but banning took more than 3 more decades after that.

His 'get out of bed with pulleys' invention killed him. Truly a person worth knowing about.

 

The problem with hydrocarbon refrigerant like propane or butane today’s compressors in residential contain ESTER oil as their lubricant and it is not soluble with hydrocarbon refrigerant it was originally developed using mineral oil based refrigerant it becomes a solution and travels very excellent with Hydro carbon-based refrigerant and chlorine-based refrigerants like R22 and R12 love mineral oil. Just like today’s automobiles compressors because they use R134 hey special oil had to be developed that’s why they use PAG or ESTER oils.
The only other little problem with Hydro carbon-based refrigerant, (but I don’t see it as a problem) is when an incompetent person or technician does not follow the rules and procedures to correctly evacuate out all the air from the system before adding a hydrocarbon refrigerant now you have air mixed with the fuel and you’re about to put it under compression with heat. I just call this a way of Darwin proving his theory to get rid of bad gene pool out of human society. Hopefully they do not reproduce and have offspring. Hydrocarbon refrigerant is a far superior refrigerant than most other refrigerants.

 

Propane and isobutane have been around for a long time, and if they are not universally recognized as superior refrigerants, someone else will need to explain why. Ammonia still has applications including space station, but it is not right for all.

My three-way on this is fire&explosion, stratospheric ozone (carbon-chlorine bond) and greenhouse gas (carbon-fluorine bond). Of those only the middle has led to progressive banning. It seems plausible that there is not one best for all applications. Those decisions are made elsewhere.

For me it's enough to decode industry names into actual chemistry names, and give each one a ranking on the 3-way. Toolbox chart @106 is a good beginning. Let's have columns for compatibility and incompatibility there also.

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To properly invoke Darwin, there cannot be incidental casualties. Yours may be an imperfect example.

 

How much R22 is actually still in use? News recently reported that the That the phase out in the US is next year.

 

If I remember correctly look-down satellites saw a plume of R22 over a large Asian country a few months ago. Unclear whether Dr. Evil is spooling up manufacture or if discarded equipment was being crushed/landfilled without proper cleanout.

 

I think existing R22 units will be grandfathered. Even in USA and surely elsewhere. What will a recharge cost???

 

Last I checked, it was $50 a pound.

 

A lot. Regardless of what people in the industry want you to believe, and the $100+ per pound being charged for fills, factory sealed 30 lb containers are currently still available all over for $350-450.

 

There still a lot of old residential and commercial units before the production of new equipment band R22 in the year 2010. It’s not allowed to be manufactured in new equipment after the 2010. Everything after that was R 410. It’s still in production and there still be millions of tons of it stored away in warehouses that will be sold for many years after the production stops. Just like our 12 stop being used in the United States for automotive in 1994. I still have a few hundred pounds of it and I get calls out or purchase every other month or so and you can still buy brand new R12 in containers to date that is old stock been depleted from large warehouse stock piles. R22 is too valuable to be discarding into landfills. You recover it you recycle it and resell it. But that’s nothing compared to the new Automotive R1234YF this is what I install in the all new Automobiles it’s $150 a pound.

 

I am taking the latest announcement is that R22 production will stop in the US on Jan. 1, 2020 then. Leaving just what is in warehouses and recycled for use.
Seems that has been the case in Europe since 2007.

 

Looking at statistics the newest R22 refrigerant residential heat pumps are already 10 years old so basically half their life has ended. There will still be on more than enough our 22 in large stock piles to last the next 10 years and recovered refrigerant to be recycled on top of that. As I decommission and replace old equipment with new I saved R22 I have a little over 200 pounds myself to be recycled. They have now perfected the new drop in replacement gases for R 22 so it’s really no longer an issue whether it still exists or not. In the last couple years they specifically produce drop in replacement condensing and heat pump units and air handler’s that are specifically made for the R22 refrigerant replacements. In the last couple years they specifically produce drop in replacement condensing and heat pump units and air handlers for R22. This gives you the ability on an old system to just replace the condenser and leave the air handler installed inside the building making it easier and more cost affordable. Anyway they’re kind of bending the rules and found a loophole in the laws about producing R 22 equipment with slight modification you can actually turn it back into our 22 specific equipment if you wanted to. This is one of those nod your head wink wink situations. So there’s no real worry it’s all hype and hysteria and media just playing up the story. So the few individuals who do not know how to properly retrofit an old system or use the new replacement drop in equipment to their advantage are the only individuals who will be worried or have a problem that’s just due to lack of education and experience

 

A missing one is R744, a.k.a. CO2. Energy efficient in numerous applications, nonflammable, nontoxic in reasonable concentrations (though a suffocation hazard if too high), non-ozone depleting, and very low GHG potential (compared to other common refrigerants) in the amounts needed for this application (a fraction of a pound per consumer device).

At end of product life, the fluid can reasonably be vented without any recovery effort, as the several ounces per device are negligible compared to the gigatons emitted by other processes each year. The recycling truck would emit far more from its own tailpipe while traveling to the pickup point than the consumer device even contains.

The primary downside is the much higher pressure hardware needed for this than for more common refrigerants. While the working fluid is very inexpensive, the rest of the system is not.

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More lists of interest:
Understanding the Refrigerant "R" Nomenclature
List of refrigerants

 

CO2 along with ammonia were a monks the very first refrigerants back 100 years ago when Mr. courier invented refrigeration. It’s OK to have high pressure it’s a ratio between the low side and high side it doesn’t matter you make up for that with the fission C in the design in the size of your evaporator and your condenser and how you manage to friction flow and velocity and weight of refrigerant to perform the BTU load required . CO2 has been in continuous use around the world just not in the USA the Japanese have a very good mini split heat pump system and it’s been used in food caring vehicles for frozen produce and refrigerated produce for decades on automobiles. USA Auto’s industry whines and cries and points to the high pressure because of the ignorant people think high-pressure means inefficiency and will lose a lot of energy. That’s again this comes down to ignorance and lack of education and those you cannot beat the math of physics but sales man and marketing for sure damn give a good try at it with a bunch of BS literature.
Here’s some simple Lehman examples for even the simplest people to understand who have the slightest bit of years in this industry working with a different refrigerants over the decades. How are use automotive examples for the first three.
1: refrigerant R 12 has a higher BTU capacity to do work then both refrigerant R134 or refrigerant R1234YF. I listed them in that order because the last refrigerant R1234YF has even a lower capacity to remove heat then R 134 . The amount of energy for 1 pound of R 12 to remove a given quantity of BTUs what is greater than the capability of R 134. Our 134 has a better heat as absorbing capacity then R1234YF. but yet all three of these refrigerants are used in automotive and all three of these refrigerants can obtain 37° 39° 45° out of the center duct – temperature examples . The amount of watts or horsepower when measured using all three of these refrigerants when the system design was designed for each refrigerant if properly done would be about equal . where you have the trouble is when you try to take one of the later developed refrigerants and throw it into a system that was designed a decade earlier because there’s fewer cooling fins in few were cooling tubes and smaller mass and area of condensers and evaporators is where are you running to the inefficiency and higher head pressure and more energy or watts used to obtain the same temperature. What most people do not know as technology has advanced they have been making the aluminum in the copper tubes thinner and thinner this makes for a more efficient heat transfer Lester ability but better heat transfer on top of that back into old are 12 days if you counted how many fins per inch on the condenser it would be somewhere between 12 to 14 fins Per inch. At first they tried to do straight drop in from the automotive manufacturers into our 134 put into our 12 equipment did not work so well and it got a bad name but then again we go back to ignorance and lack of knowledge in ability to perform simple math procedures for physics to figure these problems out. As soon as they discovered by making hire efficiency condensers and evaporators r134 works great just like the old r12. Finally the Automotive interest-free learn from past mistakes when they started to introduce the new refrigerant R1234YF they started using internal heat exchangers read more about this topic . To compensate for the lack of heat transfer per pound of the new refrigerant R1234YF. Now the mechanical systems from the compressor to the evaporator to the condenser are so efficient because the EPA energy rules for gas mileage the new systems use much less energy then the old our 12 systems with the better gas.
Now look at your home refrigerators they use all three refrigerant but yet each and everyone of them the freezer is the exact same temperature -10°F to -22°F so you can keep your ice cream hard but yet they use three different refrigerant and how many watts of power consumed by a new Refrigerator is about 60% less energy consumed to do the same amount of work.
Third example home air conditioners and heat pumps we used to use R22 and a 5 ton condenser on a 90°F day in a hot house with bad insulation would draw about 23 to 25 A of current .
Let’s jump to today were using our 410 which is not as good as R22 but equipment with a high-efficiency system to this day for a 5 ton system on the exact same house only draws 11 to 12 A of current. It’s all about the math and knowledge of physics and where companies cut corners because he fission C means wait and for every pound of aluminum or copper you use is money which means less profit so they kept their equipment size small use bigger compressor is that use more energy to do the same amount of work but because of the energy codes nowadays they cannot get away with that so they’re forced to use more copper and aluminum and now you see large size condensers that have the highest energy efficiency rating because of the mass and volume involved. It’s all about the math and knowledge of physics and where companies cut corners because he fission C means weight and for every pound of aluminum or copper you use is money which means less profit so they kept their equipment size small use bigger compressors that use more energy to do the same amount of work but because of the energy codes nowadays they cannot get away with that so they’re forced to use more copper and aluminum and now you see large size condensers that have the highest energy efficiency rating because of the mass and volume involved it only involves about a fifth grade level of math and science class education to understand this.

 

It's all based on profit margin. The traditional home HVAC unit had an actual life of 20 years or so. Because of the cost of copper, the new coils in the current crop are made with the thinnest and least amount of copper as possible. Corrosion is the real killer of the evaporator coils in the air handler. Don't expect the newer units to last as long.

Notwithstanding environmental factors, R12 and R22 were used because they were the most efficient and cost effective.

Due to environmental regulations, less and less R134a is being used in each individual automobile system. Two pounds was common before 2000. Now, it's more like 10-11 ounces.