• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.182-190
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• 2007

Refrigeration and air-conditioning equipments are indispensable products in this civilized society. However, discharged refrigerants used in the equipments and exhausted carbon dioxide to drive the refrigeration and air-conditioning equipments are related to serious environmental problems and energy problems. Especially, the destroyed ozonosphere by the discharged refrigerants and the increased normal temperature by carbon dioxide and fluorocarbon refrigerants (green house gases) are sounded as serious global problems. For alleviating these problems, environmental-friendly refrigeration and air-conditioning equipments must be developed and will spread soon. To develop new equipment, a suitable refrigerant for each usage must be presented. In this paper, the current state of refrigerants was introduced. And, thermophysical properties of the refrigerants were introduced briefly. From the properties, the refrigerants and refrigeration cycles are promising to be used in the future, were proposed

• Solar Energy
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.69-79
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• 1998

This paper is concerned about the performance of HCFC22 alternative refrigerants used in heat pumps and industrial chillers. A water-to-water breadboard heat pump with counter-current heat exchangers and a hermetic compressor was built to carry out the experiments with various refrigerants. For each test, more than 40 temperatures, 4 pressures, power input, mass flow rates of the heat transfer fluids were measured. Refrigerants tested were HCFC22, R290(Propane), an azeotrope of 45%Propane/55%R134a mixture, and a nonazeotropic mixture of Calor 50. All tests were conducted under ARI test A condition. It is found that the COP and capacity of propane were 18% and 2.5% higher than those of HCFC22 while the COP and capacity of 45%Propane/55%R134a mixture were 3.5% and 5.3% higher than those of HCFC22 respectively. Also the COP and capacity of Calor 50 were 17% and 7.8% higher than those of HCFC22. Compressor discharge temperatures of alternative refrigerants were roughly $35^{\circ}C$ lower than that of HCFC22 indicating that these refrigerants are good from the view point of compressor reliability. The charging amounts for the alternative refrigerants were reduced by 40-60% as compared to that of HCFC22. Overall, it can be said that hydrocarbon containing alternative refrigerants are excellent in thermodynamic performance but should be used with considerable care due to their flammability.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.683-694
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• 1998

The application of hydrocarbon refrigerants in a hermetic reciprocating compressor for refrigerator is investigated. The selected refrigerants are isobutane(R600a), propane(R290), R12, binary mixture of R600a/R290, and OS-21CII. Both theoretical and experimental investigations have been performed for the selected refrigerants. The test results of hydrocarbon refrigerants have been compared to the traditional refrigerant(R12). The results show that hydrocarbon refrigerants(HC-Blend, OS-21C II) are very good alternatives in the refrigeration system for R12.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Marine Engineers Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.63-64
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• 2006

Chracteristics on evaporating pressure drop of HCs refrigerants inside a horizontal tube were studied experimentally. Experimental results were presented for pressure drops of hydrocarbon refrigerants R-290, R-600a, R-1270 and HCFC refrigerant R-22 inside a horizontal double pipe heat exchanger. Three tubes with a tube diameter of 12.70mm, 9.52mm and 6.35mm were used for this study. Hydrocarbon refrigerants showed higher evaporating pressure drop than that of R-22 in all tubes. The highest pressure drop was founded in R-600a. The highest evaporating perssure drop of all refrigerants was shown in a tube diameter of 6.35mm with same mass flux. The results can be used as the basic data for the design of heat exchanger using hydrocarbon refrigerants as an alternatives.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.522-529
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• 2004

In this study, external condensation heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) of flammable refrigerants of propylene, propane, isobutane, butane, DME, and HFC32 were measured on a horizontal plain tube, 26 fpi low fin tube, and Turbo-C tube. All data were taken at the temperature of 39$^{\circ}C$ with a wall subcooling of 3∼8$^{\circ}C$. Test results showed a typical trend that condensation HTCs of flammable refrigerants decrease with increasing wall subcooling. HFC32 had the highest HTCs among the tested refrigerants showing 44% higher HTCs than those of HCFC22 while DME showed 28% higher HTCs than those of HCFC22. HTCs of propylene and butane were similar to those of HCFC22 while those of propane and isobutane were similar to those of HFC134a. Based upon the tested data, Nusselt's equation is modified to predict the plain tube data within a deviation of 3%. For 26 fpi low fin tube, Beatty and Katz equation predicted the data within a deviation of 7.3% for all flammable refrigerants tested. The heat transfer enhancement factors for the 26 fpi low fin and Turbo-C tubes were 4.6∼5.7 and 4.7∼6.9 respectively for the refrigerants tested indicating that the performance of Turbo-C tube is the best among the tubes tested.

• International Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.102-109
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• 2006

Experimental results for heat transfer characteristics and pressure gradients of HCs refrigerants R-290, R-600a, R-1270 and HCFC refrigerant R-22 during evaporating inside horizontal double pipe heat exchangers are presented. The test sections which has one tube diameter of 12.70 mm with 0.89 mm wall thickness, another tube diameter of 9.52 mm with 0.76 mm wall thickness are used for this investigation. The local evaporating heat transfer coefficients of hydrocarbon refrigerants were higher than that of R-22. The average evaporating heat transfer coefficient increased with the increase of the mass flux, with the higher values in hydrocarbon refrigerants than R-22. Hydrocarbon refrigerants have higher pressure drop than R-22. Those results from the investigation can be used in the design of heat exchangers using hydrocarbons as the refrigerant for the air-conditioning systems.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.1264-1269
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• 2004

This research describes the application of hydrocarbon refrigerants for heat pump system which is needed for fish farm. Tested refrigerants are HCFC-22 and hydrocarbon refrigerants(CARE 50 and ASR-20). CARE 50 is mixture of R-290 and R-170, and ASR-20 is mixture of R-152a, R-290 and other additives. Heat pump consist of shell and tube heat exchanger, scroll compressor, expansion valve and accumulator. Manual expansion valve is used for testing of wide range evaporating temperature. Hydrocarbon refrigerants show a good performance as an alternative for HCFC-22 in the range of evaporating temperature from $-6^{\circ}C$ to $6^{\circ}C$.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1656-1667
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• 1997

Condensing heat transfer characteristics of hydrocarbon refrigerants are experimentally investigated. Single component hydrocarbon refrigerants (propane, isobutane, butane and propylene) and binary mixtures of propane/isobutane and propane/butane are considered as test fluids. Local condensing heat transfer coefficients of selected refrigerants are obtained from overall conductance measurement. Average heat transfer coefficients at different mass fluxes and heat transfer rates are shown and compared with those of R22. Pure hydrocarbon refrigerants have higher values of heat transfer coefficient than R22. It is also found that there is a heat transfer degradation for hydrocarbon mixtures due to composition variation during condensation. Measured condensing heat transfer coefficients are compared with predicted values by available correlations. An empirical correlation for pure and mixed hydrocarbon is developed, and it shows good agreement with experimental data.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.125-132
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• 1999

Studies are being done to replace conventional refrigerants with alternatives that have low or no ozone depletion and greenhouse warming Potentials, yet possess appropriate pro perties for a refrigeration cycle. To achieve this goal, a consistent set of thermodynamic properties of the working fluid is required. A common problem with the possible alternative refrigerants is that sufficient experimental data do not exist, thus making it difficult to develp complete equations of state that can predict properties in all regions including the vapor-liquid equilibrium. One solution is the use of the generalized equation of state correlations that can predict thermodynamic properties with a minimum number of characteristic parameters. Characteristic parameters required for the generalized equation of state are, in general, critical temperature, critical pressure, critical volume and normal boiling temperature. In this study, estimation of these characteristic parameters of refrigerants by group contribution method is developed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.830-840
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• 1997

In this study, condensation heat transfer coefficients(HTCs) of CFC-11, HCFC-123 and HCFC-141b are measured, which are used/or considered as working fluids in centrifugal chillers. The main objectives of this study are to measure and compare the HTCs of various refrigerants on plain and low fin tubes and also to find out the optimum fin density of the low fin tubes. To accomplish these goals, HTCs of three refrigerants are measured for the plain tube as well as 4 types of low fin tubes. All measurements are carried out at the vapor temperature of 39.deg. C with the wall temperature difference of 3 .deg. C ~ 8.deg. C. For all the refrigerants tested, a low fin tube of 28 fins per inch yielded the best performance among all the tubes tested. For the plain tube, the HTCs of CFC-11 and HCFC-141b were very similar and those of HCFC-123 were 10% lower than those of CFC-11.Thus, it can be concluded that HCFC-123 and HCFC-141b are acceptable as alternative refrigerants for CFC-11 from the view point of condensation heat transfer.