More than a dozen chemical blends could serve as alternative refrigerants that won’t heat the atmosphere as much as today’s refrigerants do, or catch fire, according to a new computational study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The NIST study identified the 22 “best” nonflammable or marginally flammable blends with lower global warming potential (GWP)—a measure of how much heat a gas will trap if released into the atmosphere—than the current standard refrigerant for vehicle air conditioning (AC), called R-134a (tetrafluoroethane).
Most of the identified blends combine R-134a with one or two other commercial refrigerants.
Read more at National Institute of Standards and Technology