NIST Study Identifies Chemical Blends as Possible Alternative Refrigerants
WASHINGTON — 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 (a/c), called R-134a (tetrafluoroethane).