Phasing out of r410 and what’s next r 32

clammy

Propane is flammable . I wonder not to get personal Ron but are you in the Hvac field and deal w refrigerants? If so great then you will be the first one w others who can go service reclaim and deal w propane refrigerant and all the excitement that may come w it . As for the downfalls of ammonia as you see it I feel are not totally valid as for ammonia being used in a seal absorption unit . Remember it was one of the first domestic refrigerators in house holds and still used in remote areas matter of fact they have one at a local boy scot camp . Also if you can’t smell a minuscule ammonia leak then you must of had covid a few times or your dead . If there was a odorant added to r32 then maybe but I still ain’t buying it . I think I de deal w the exposure issue w ammonia over a possible explosion issue w a flammable ref. . I do believe there will be a regulation on system size and total amount of lbs of ref.
Truth be too told I though no one would even post a comment lol
Peace and good luck clammy
And this by no means is any type of personal attack . Just wonder what you do for a living , me I spin a wrench ,drag knuckles , hit head on low pipes and Despoit checks .

clammy

I forgot to add I also sing quite poorly and make people laugh sometimes and also cry when I tell them the truth in a mechanical sense . Truth be told
Peace and good luck clammy

archibald tuttle

wow, i go away for a couple of days and this thread falls to third page :-) . @unclejohn howse the band? and I can't really support categorical rejection of flammable refrigerants. As is already the case, many refrigerators in the US and more in the rest of the world have flammable refrigerants and larger heating appliances can have I think 2 kilos in the EU even with those god forsaken bureaucrats in brussels. What the hell every happen to the american spirit of adventure. we are all preoccupied with safetyism.

I am not against safety, i'm against poor outcomes for humanity when placing precaution over function.

as i'm wont to say: R600A - a boom for the HVAC industry.

I think isobutane should be the minisplit refrigerant of the future. It is certainly a no brainer for standalone outdoor chiller style systems. The problem with those is your are adding a heat exchanger split. although was it @jumper who was talking about thermocompression but I didn't think that would work on a liquid, but wth do i know. (that is what everyone asks everytime i post :-) )

That said @ChrisJ I understand the idea of it seeming silly to complain about very modest flammable appliance charges when there is a limitless charge for gas stoves; but, to be fair, that is delivered at 1/4 to 1/2 psi so it is pretty easy to keep it from leaking (disregard lawrence, ma on account of i believe they accidentally pressured that system into the hundreds thus forcing all the low pressure regulators and blowing up the town, so to speak.

Fortunately, society has figured out that the reality that people occasionaly leave their stoves on every once and a while and that industrial engineers screw up a gas installation now and again, is not enough of a reason to ban gas stoves (although silly preoccupations with CO2 are threatening to over turn decades of common sense, what else is new). But of course I think modest charges for up to maybe 2 or 3 ton minisplits with isobutane could be managed with best practices, given the low pressures of operation like as low as 75 psi on the high side for 105 degree condensing which is notably better than even R12.

Are there risks, sure, but how do those risks compare to the problems with R410A and current proposed replacements? I am a skeptic of effectively forcing people onto heat pumps. I don't air condition so I have less interest in installing one. I use the old fashioned way, wait til it starts to cool down at night and then put on a fan. But I don't begrudge air conditioning to others and it is somewhat a no-brainer to use heat pump rather than air-con tech in the installation (there are a few things that were simpler about the standalone air-con, but there are so many heat pumps being made and tech being run over long periods I don't worry too much about the failure of 4 way valves vs. TXVs or fixed orifice units. With 410A, many installations are going to run out of gas long before their compressors and 4-way valves run out of gas . . . if ya know what i mean.

brian

archibald tuttle

@ron love your propane meme although i've had the best or worst of both worlds, LP powered ammonia refrigerators in the house! it's true that ammonia is toxic but dose makes the poison and it is highly detectable as compared to say CO. I'm open on ammonia and i love stainless steel. actually in my memory even the old steel systems used to last and last. not sure i want to spend a life brazing steel to make that happen. maybe if i weld it with coat hangers i'm in. the temperatures needed for brazing and the ability to still have imperfect joints always made welding more attractive to me. . . . i wasn't really sure on the operating pressures with ammonia. so R717 pressure-enthalpy chart suggests maybe 260 psi condensing for heat pump application. with the right joinery and anti corrosion that is kind R22 territory. I still have this instinctive favoritism toward lower pressure refrigerants. just seems like there would be advantages although the energy needed to some extent focuses on the split between low and high side, the equipment that can manage higher pressures has got to be more subject to failure over the long run.

jumper

Even US has approved hydrocarbons for small machines.
Modern materials & techniques make high pressures feasible.
We've been using high pressure refrigerants for decades already.
GWP sounds like an issue only for whacko s looking for an issue.
CO2 is a trace atmospheric gas and HCs are even rarer components.

Anyone remember story about guy who charged up leaking R22 auto A/Cs with common propane?

ChrisJ

jumper said:

Even US has approved hydrocarbons for small machines. Modern materials & techniques make high pressures feasible. We've been using high pressure refrigerants for decades already. GWP sounds like an issue only for whacko s looking for an issue. CO2 is a trace atmospheric gas and HCs are even rarer components. Anyone remember story about guy who charged up leaking R22 auto A/Cs with common propane?

I've heard many stories, most of which are fake.

Whats the story about a guy that charged a R22 automotive system (that never existed) with propane?

archibald tuttle

@jumper I didn't say we can't use high pressure refrigerants , but I did say that EPAs expected refrigerant life with the moderately high pressure 410A systems is 7 years. If you didn't stick the coil with a knife while defrosting, an old school fridge would hold its charge for 40 or 50 years and the compressors would often run that long.

admittedly the units with long refrigerant life I am thinking of were almost exclusively factory assembled and not field connected components so that is a far cry from the proliferation of field connected heat pumps but I would lay a bet that the life refrigerant life of R22 and R12 field connected systems was better than R410A and would blow it's doors off with the improvement of practices that have ensued since those were the most widely used refrigerants. (and R22 has so little ozone depletion potential that phasing it out was a disservice to humanity when we don't have good replacements. one set of frost burns later when my C&D core remover seals burst with 410A with ambient pressures around 150 psi at the temp I was working vs. circa 85 psi for R22 vs. 20 psi ! for R600a. It doesn't take many incidents like that to make me think that lower pressure is safer for the tech. Yes, I could have had gloves on, but I never had a core remover fail like that before and had no expecation.

In my own house, if I had a choice between 410A (or 32A or R53 dropin) and R600A, i'd take R600A in a heartbeat.

I agree that GWP is a deliberate hobgoblin but one doesn't have to deny some truth falls amongst the global warming scripture to recognize that the religious prescriptions of climate devotees are misanthropical utopiansim.

jumper

ChrisJ said:

jumper said:

Even US has approved hydrocarbons for small machines.
Modern materials & techniques make high pressures feasible.
We've been using high pressure refrigerants for decades already.
GWP sounds like an issue only for whacko s looking for an issue.
CO2 is a trace atmospheric gas and HCs are even rarer components.

Anyone remember story about guy who charged up leaking R22 auto A/Cs with common propane?

I've heard many stories, most of which are fake.

Whats the story about a guy that charged a R22 automotive system (that never existed) with propane?




I don't know where I got the incorrect memory that automobile manufactures switched to R22 after Montreal Protocol. The story (before internet) that circulated among refrigeration technicians was that somebody in Florida charged up leaky auto A/C s with ordinary propane. Cheaper than finding and repairing leaks. Repeat business too. Tale was that fix worked but authorities jailed the guy.

ChrisJ

jumper said:

ChrisJ said:

jumper said:

Even US has approved hydrocarbons for small machines.
Modern materials & techniques make high pressures feasible.
We've been using high pressure refrigerants for decades already.
GWP sounds like an issue only for whacko s looking for an issue.
CO2 is a trace atmospheric gas and HCs are even rarer components.

Anyone remember story about guy who charged up leaking R22 auto A/Cs with common propane?

I've heard many stories, most of which are fake.

Whats the story about a guy that charged a R22 automotive system (that never existed) with propane?

I don't know where I got the incorrect memory that automobile manufactures switched to R22 after Montreal Protocol. The story (before internet) that circulated among refrigeration technicians was that somebody in Florida charged up leaky auto A/C s with ordinary propane. Cheaper than finding and repairing leaks. Repeat business too. Tale was that fix worked but authorities jailed the guy.

R-134A is what they switched to after R-12.

Yeah, it's illegal and that hasn't been a secret. It certainly shouldn't be done on a customers vehicle.

That said, my 2019 runs r1234yf which is flammable.
But then again, so is the 10+ gallons of gasoline under the backseat.

archibald tuttle

@ChrisJ

your thoughts are I think all true, albeit, to be fair r1234yf is 2L, which is as low as you can go on and still be classified as flammable . . .

given the charges involved, would it be that bad if it were it were class 3 like R290 aka propane in cars. I doubt it.

e.g. here's some of the direct drop in work 134a to R290 on commercial ice storage style system where optimal propane charge is like 1/3 by weight of 134a . . .

brian

jumper

ChrisJ said:

jumper said:

R-134A is what they switched to after R-12.

Yeah, it's illegal and that hasn't been a secret. It certainly shouldn't be done on a customers vehicle.

That said, my 2019 runs r1234yf which is flammable.
But then again, so is the 10+ gallons of gasoline under the backseat.

Refrigerant gases likely to dissipate rather than ignite?