Refrigeration system performance using alternative refrigerants

Abstract: The European Parliament has shown its legislative capabilities by adopting a tough approach on the reduction of fluorinated gases (F-gases). The EU Regulation No 517/2014, will phase out F-gases with high global warming potential (GWP) within a well-defined step down time schedule. This will affect refrigerants which are commonly used in commercial cooling applications. While the time schedule implies existence of replace- ment refrigerants, the market continues to develop alternatives for the refrigerants already in deployment. Though the R404A,which is a commonly used refrigerant in station- ary cooling applications, will be prohibited of use 1 January 2020. In this paper, the two alternatives R448A from Honeywell and R449A from DuPont were compared to the R404A baseline, within a theoretical model with empirical compressor and system input data. The key points of comparison were cooling capacity, compressor discharge temperature, coefficient of performance (COP) and total equivalent warming impact (TEWI). The outcome of the model showed a decrease in cooling capacity for both alternatives, as well as an overall increase in compressor discharge temperature. For low evaporator temperatures, a decrease in COP was present and vice versa for high evaporator temperatures, both for medium and high condenser temperature. However, the TEWI for the both refrigerants, showed a decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions during the refrigerant system lifespan, running on both R448A and R449A, regardless of which European country the electricity was produced in.