Refrigerants

Webinar No. 2

Submitted by
Angelo B. Mariano
201811556

Faculty
ME Department

Date
March 18, 2022
 Reaction Paper

Engr. De Leon is a registered mechanical engineer and he is also a registered

safety officer level 2. His experiences are focused in project management, power
generation, business development, design and bidding for hydro-mechanical equipment,
storage tanks, pressure vessel and most especially for air-conditioning and refrigeration
system.
The speaker Engr. De Leon worked with significant number of companies where his line
of work is in terms of design, planning, estimation and business-related endeavors.
Moreover, he is also a President and CEO of a company that has something to do with
supply of industrial and commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning. He is a member of
ASHRAE PH Chapter specifically in the refrigeration committee part of the ASHRAE.
In the twentieth century, air-conditioning and refrigeration systems became more
convenient and containable. Refrigeration plays critical roles in comfort, food production,
storage, and a variety of other manufacturing processes. It is correct that our lives would
be more challenging if we did not have air conditioning and refrigeration. This reaction
paper will discuss the history of refrigeration, focusing on refrigerants and how they have
evolved over time, the role of engineers in designing and building it, and finally
applications.
The webinar topic is all about refrigerants which are primarily used in air-conditioning and
refrigeration as they able to absorb huge amount of heat in practical way yet efficiently.
In order to perform this, refrigerant undergoes evaporation and condensation in the
refrigeration process.
The history of refrigerants was also been discussed starting from 1st generation up to 4th
generation. We have different generations of refrigerant because the earlier generations
were being phased out because environmental considerations like ozone depletion and
global warming where these refrigerants contribute to greenhouse gas.
The functions of refrigerants were also discussed in terms of how it absorbs hear, moves
heat and rejects the heat it absorbs. In addition, refrigerant also helps the component of
the refrigeration system by cooling the compressor windings, cooling compressor oil and
how it defrosts ice from evaporator.
The criteria for refrigerant selection were also mentioned where it should answer the
questions like “Is it environmental?”, “Is it safe for human use?”, “Is it durable and
efficient?”, and lastly, “Is it economical?”. Having answered these questions would direct
you to the best refrigerant choice because the selection of refrigerant is critical since it
can affect the equipment and efficiency of your designed system.
Engr. De Leon also discussed the classification refrigerants and safety classification,
requirements and handling of refrigerants. For the classification of refrigerants, the
refrigerants are divided into three classes, Class 1, Class 2 and Class 3. Where Class 1
works by absorption or extraction of latent heat while Class 2 works by the absorption of
sensible heat, lastly for Class 3, it works by absorption of liquid vapor that would result to
cooling effect. For safety classification, requirements and handling of refrigerants, Engr.
De Leon showed to us the AHSRAE 34 where we can use to determine the toxicity and
flammability of a certain refrigerant. For safety requirements, he said that the
manufacturer should provide information or refer from public instruction of ASHRAE about
the properties of the refrigerant as well as instructions on how to handle them because
refrigerant might leak and maintaining the system requires flawless procedures.
The efforts in lessening the impact of refrigerants to ozone depletion and global warming
were also discussed, it is said that in just a span of 30 years there are three treaties and
two conferences were conducted in international level that has a strong imposition rules
to address that problem brought by the old types of refrigerants. In the latter part of the
webinar, the current and future trends were also mentioned where it is obvious that the
trend is to abandon CFC and HCFC compounds and lean towards zero ODP and low
GWP.
Through this seminar, I learned that it takes a lot of time to arrive to the
refrigerant that we are using today because 18th century’s technology and knowledge is
not that broad and advance enough to come up to what we have as of the moment. The
modern refrigerants and applications that we are using today are products of continuous
effort of people and government to make sure that it is not only practical but also ethical
in regards to being good stewards of environment as well as concerning the condition of
the future generation. As time goes by, our problems evolve and so our solutions, we
went from “whatever worked” to “CFCs & HCFCs” and now we have “HFCs, HFOs, and
natural fluids”.
Next generation refrigerants must be developed on the basis of zero ODP and low GWP.
Further research, regulatory changes, the design of new systems suitable for the use of
natural and newly developed refrigerants and system optimization can be expected in the
future. There can be no ideal refrigerant, but it is very important that refrigerants have
less impact on the environment. The return to natural refrigerants at a new, high
technology level should not be forgotten.
PICTURES