Experimental Study Of Explosion Limits Of Refrigerants And Lubricants’ Mixtures

A silent transforming influence of field already becomes the consciousness that the protection the ozone layer and stem global warming. To protect the environment is the prerequisite for refrigeration and air-conditioning industry for benefiting our descendants. It is an irresistible trend to adopt environment friendly refrigerants which has low global warming potential value. Higher requirements are made, for green refrigerants’exploration and exploitation. More or less, to one’s disappointment, most evident friendly refrigerants themselves or contain combustible compound.Though international standard has not been set up, researchers must to pace forward. In one way, it is useful to get accurate date of combustion velocity, flammability limits and heat of combustion. On the other way, to find how combustible capability is influenced is just as important.It is well known that lubricants are wildly used in refrigeration and air condition equipment. Lubricants as oil refining products, is combustible. When an accident happens, the lubricant mixed in combustible refrigerant is a big trouble. For this reason, this issue should be researched carefully.In this paper, an apparatus is made by accordance to ASTM E681-09. A new system is made to which oil atomization component is added to. Without changing any original testing condition; oil atomized is mixed in the flammable refrigerant. By testing the critical flammability ration curve, to determine how much the lubricant influence the flammability limits of flammable refrigerants.This paper accomplished:1. Summarizing research status of flammable refrigerants. According HFC-32’s weak flammability, HFC-32is proposed to be the next generation environment friendly refrigerant, which is much safer than that like HC-290.2. Summarizing research status of flammable refrigerants’limits estimation. A simple expression is proposed according to the theory of dissipation and entropy generation. To make the experiment easier to operation, a new auto-ignition system is equipped. For the reason that the lubricant is added, the estimation and the experiment is more or less harder.3. To get a safer condition to accomplish the experiment, advanced control technique is applied. A Lab VIEW console application is installed in PC, so that remote operation is available through local area network.