Theoretical Analysis of Low Global Warming Potential Refrigerant as a dro‎p in Replacement of R134a in a Domestic Refrigerator

Nowadays refrigerators and air conditioners are the major energy users in a domestic environment. The improvement of efficiency of a these appliances can be considered as an important step to reduce their energy consumption, Along with the efficiency improvement, the prevention of environmental pollution is also be needed. The CFCs have been almost ruled out since 1995 and a longstanding basis HCFCs must be replaced by 2020 due to their huge impact on the ozone layer. All this events encouraged HFC refrigerants which are harmless to the ozone layer, but HFC refrigerants having a high Global Warming Potential (GWP); which cause environmental pollution if it leaks into the environment. But later Kyoto protocol came into existence which stated the need to replace HFC’S due to their high GWP values. So in this paper, thermodynamic analysis of domestic refrigerator using R134a as a refrigerant was conducted and the results of HFC134a were compared with various low GWP refrigerants like, HFC152a, HC290, HC600a, HFO1234yf and HFO1234ze(E) as a possible alternative to R134a without any modification to the system. Effect of the various operating parameters that is evaporator temperature, condenser temperature, the presence of liquid-suction heat exchanger and pressure drop with performance parameters like COP, refrigeration effect, compressor work and pressure ratio have been reported. Theoretical results revealed that all the alternative refrigerants used in the analysis have a slightly lower performance coefficient (COP) than HFC134a at various condensation temperature of 25 and 45 0C and evaporating temperatures ranging between −200C to 100C. At the same time performance of a conventional refrigeration system improved with the help of liquid-suction heat exchanger.