Wednesday, February 1, 2017: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Effects of Climate Change on HVAC&R
Chair:
Thomas Watson, P.E., Daikin Applied
Technical Committee: MTG.LowGWP Lower Global Warming Potential Alternative Refrigerants
Sponsor: SSPC-15, and Refrigeration Committee
CoSponsor: 3.1 Refrigerants and Secondary Coolants
AHRI, ASHRAE, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are collaborating to fund vital research that will establish a more robust fact base about the properties and the use of flammable refrigerants. This $5.8 million research program is coordinated by the AHRTI Flammable Refrigerants Committee. This session provides the Society with a summary and status update on these key research projects. The audience can learn the industry’s challenge and efforts towards implementing flammable refrigerants. Open dialogue during the discussion phase will help provide valuable feedback to research teams.
1 AHRTI Research Projects on Flammable Refrigerants
Three AHRTI projects on flammable refrigerants and their status are presented: Benchmarking Risk by Real Life Leaks and Ignitions Testing, Leak Detection of A2L Refrigerants in HVACR Equipment and Investigation of Hot surface Ignition Temperature for 2L Refrigerants.
2 ASHRAE Research Projects on Flammable Refrigerants
Three ASHRAE projects on flammable refrigerants and their status are presented: ASHRAE 1806 Flammable Refrigerants Post-ignition Risk Assessment, ASHRAE 1807: Guidelines for flammable refrigerant handling, transporting, storing and equipment servicing and installation and ASHRAE 1808: Servicing and Installing Equipment using Flammable Refrigerants: Assessment of Field-made Mechanical Joints.
3 ORNL Research Effort on Charge Limits for Various Types of Equipment Employing Flammable Refrigerants
In this project, ORNL reviews existing information on available studies and methodologies for determining safe charge limits for equipment employing flammable refrigerants. ORNL will then embark on a modeling campaign to evaluate different leak source and rate scenarios for various types of equipment employing A2L refrigerants using CFD dispersion modeling. The project status update is also presented.
4 NIST Effort on Modeling Tools for Flammability Ranking of Low-GWP Refrigerant Blends
For the thermodynamic performance of refrigerants, there exists predictive tools that can be used for working fluid optimization. It would be highly desirable if such a capability could be developed for flammability. The goal of the present project is to develop the capability to predict, from first principles, the burning velocity of pure refrigerants (R32, R125, R134a, R152a, 1234yf, and 1234ze(E)), as well as their blends. Once developed, the predictive models can then be used to understand the effect of individual components of blends on the burning velocity so that guiding principles can be developed for reducing flammability.