New Chemical Alternative Refrigerants

Due to the increased public concern over the role that chlorofluorocarbons CCFCs) play in depleting stratospheric ozone, a landmark international agreement , the Montreal Protocol, was signed in 1987 which regulated the production and consum ption of CFCs. More recently, several nations, most notably Canada, the Federal Rep ublic of Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States, have planned or impleme nted more stringent regulations than those required by the Montreal Protocol. Unfortunately, many of the leading choices for replacing CFCs tend to be less energy efficient. Recent studies analyzing the energy impacts of CFC alternatives have concluded that the United States would possibly increase its overall energy consum ption by 0.21-2.27 quadrillion Btu per year. These same reports have shown a tremen dous opportunity for sizeable reductions in energy consumption if highly-efficient, adva nced technologies are successfully developed and widely used. This paper provides greater insight into the economic and efficiency trade-offs of leading CFC alternatives for many air conditioning and refrigeration processes. The applications investigated in this paper are household refrigerators and free zers, centrifugal chillers, commercial refrigeration and industrial refrigeration syst ems. Comparisons of efficiency and costs between the leading alternatives are presen ted. Technical issues which prevent the widespread use of these highly-efficient nonCFC technologies are discussed. These technical problems can form a basis for a conc erted research program for accelerating the market implementation of these highly-effic ient, non-CFC technologies.