Performance of mixture refrigerant R152a/R125/R32 in domestic air-conditioner

This work reports a ternary blend R152a/R125/R32 with a mass ratio of 48/18/34 as a potential alternative to R22. A computer code has been developed with NIST REFPROP 7.0 for the comparative analysis of thermophysical properties and refrigerant performance of this new mixture and of R22. A drop-in test of this new mixture was performed in a domestic air-conditioner originally designed for R22. Both the calculation and experimental results showed that this new mixture could be regarded as a most likely drop-in substitute for R22 in many applications. The flammability of this ternary blend was also studied with an explosion apparatus to prove that it could be used safely. Besides, simulation of the refrigerant cycle leakage showed that the variation of composition due to leakage was so little that there is no much performance degradation.