Driving Efficiency through Hydrocarbon for Green Car Air Conditioning

Abstract

The feasibility of hydrocarbon mixtures to replace HFC-R134a in automotive air conditioning systems is investigated in this paper. The temperature distribution in car cabin and fuel consumption are evaluated at various passenger load and vehicle speeds using hydrofluorocarbons refrigerant (HFC-R134a) and hydrocarbon refrigerant as the working fluid of the compressor. The experiments are tested in an actual petrol engine vehicle on a roller dynamometer to simulate actual vehicle on level road. The experiments are conducted at the same surrounding conditions. The test has performed by varying the vehicle speed; 50, 70, 90 and 110 kph, and number of passengers; 1 and 2, at temperature set-point of 21°C. The result shows that the hydrocarbon mixtures provide excellent temperature distribution and fuel conservation effect is about 2.95% to 11.90%. In addition, the results support the possibility of using hydrocarbon mixtures as an alternative to HFC-R134a in the automotive air conditioning system, without the necessity of changing parts in the current system.