An Experimental Study on the Cooling Performance of Refrigerant (R134a/R1234yf) in Automobile HVAC System

Abstract

The present work deals with the experimental investigation on the performance evaluation of R134a and R1234yf as automotive HVAC refrigerants. As the usage of R134a increases environmental issues due to its higher global warming potential (GWP), it is necessary to find an alternative without compromising the performance of the HVAC system. R1234yf having low GWP is one such drop-in alternative. But the COP of the system using R1234yf is observed to be low. Hence this work investigates on the effects of using an internal heat exchanger (IHX) with the conventional automotive HVAC system in the performance enhancement. The results indicate acceptable range of cooling capacity, COP and compressor discharge temperature for R1234yf when integrated with IHX and a high efficiency evaporator. COP of the R1234yf IHX system is observed to higher than the COP of R134a baseline system. The results of cooling capacity and compression discharge temperature of R1234yf IHX system also shows an enhancement and matches with the corresponding values of R134a baseline system.