Abstract
Air conditioners are responsible for human comfort, food preservation and equipment maintenance in residential, commercial and industrial sectors and the working fluid of this system is the refrigerant which forms the heart of most modern air conditioning systems. It is therefore imperative that care be taken in the choice of refrigerants for this system. In this light, South Africa has decided on the acceptable refrigerants R407A, R410A, R717, R744, R134a and R600. This paper seeks to literally survey the acceptable alternative refrigerants in South Africa, their characteristics, their thermodynamic and electrical impact on an air conditioning system. These characteristics include volumetric cooling capacity (VCC), pressure ratio, compressor power and COP. It reveals pressure ratio for the various alternatives is higher than for R22 with R410A emerging highest, the cooling capacity of all the refrigerants are lower than that of R22 except R717 and R744. COP of some of these refrigerants were noticed to be higher than that of R22 with that of R600 being the highest and compressor power of some of the alternatives were discovered to be lower than that of R22 with that of R600 being the lowest. R407A was recommended as a potential R22 substitute due to its zero ODP and insignificant difference in crucial parameters between the latter and the former.
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