The Performance of Alternative Refrigerant Gas R152a as Mobile Air Conditioning Refrigerant

Abstract

In this study, the possible alternative replacement of R134a with R152 in the air conditioning (AC) system of an automobile has been investigated theoretically. The properties of the R152a is presented and compared with three different refrigerants (R134a, R22 and R12). At a constant condenser temperature,the effect of evaporator temperature (Te=-20 °C – 0 °C) and compressor speed (n = 600 - 2,000 rpm) onthe cooling load, the condenser heat load, compressor work, the mass flow rate of refrigerant andperformance coefficient of the AC system have been examined with the help of a commercial computer program for refrigerants investigated. It was found that R152a and R134a do not lead to any significant difference on the performance of the refrigeration system. This result shows that with small modifications on the AC systems of current automobiles commonly using R134a, R-152a can be used as an alternative refrigerant since their compression ratios are almost the same.