NIST smooths transition to "safe," energy-efficient refrigeration. (News Briefs).The National Institute of Standards and Technology National Institute of Standards and Technology, governmental agency within the U.S. Dept. of Commerce with the mission of "working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards" in the national interest. has contributed significantly to the refrigeration industry through its work with "alternative" refrigerants Chemical refrigerants are assigned an R number(sometimes the label replaces it with the word Freon) which is determined systematically according to molecular structure. The following is a list of refrigerants with their R numbers, IUPAC chemical name, molecular formula, and CAS number. for the past 14 years, and the effort is paying off. When it became known that chlorofluorocarbons chlorofluorocarbons (klōr'əfl  r`əkär'bənz, klôr'–) (CFCs), organic compounds that contain carbon, chlorine, and fluorine atoms. and hydrochlorofluorocarbons hydrochlorofluorocarbons: see under chlorofluorocarbons. in refrigerants were contributing to depletion of the earth's protective ozone layer, NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. began a program (funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences and Office of Building Technologies) to measure the properties of their replacements. These data have been made available through a computer program known as NIST Standard Reference Database 23: Thermodynamic and Transport Properties of Refrigerants and Refrigerant re·frig·er·antadj. 1. Cooling or freezing; refrigerating. 2. Reducing fever. n. 1. A substance, such as air, ammonia, water, or carbon dioxide, used to provide cooling either as the working substance of Mixtures Database (or REEPROP for REFrigerant PROPerties). Some 1500 copies of REFPROP have been distributed over the years and it continues to be a timely and valuable tool for refrigeration engineers, chemical and equipment manufacturers, and others who use refrigerants. Version 6.0 now provides data on 33 pure refrigerants, as well as refrigerant mixtures. But the database's real impact has been in facilitating the design of more energy-efficient cooling equipment. In 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), independent agency of the U.S. government, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1970 to reduce and control air and water pollution, noise pollution, and radiation and to ensure the safe handling and estimated that new, non-CFC chillers used to cool large buildings reduced U.S. energy costs by $480 million annually (which corresponds to an improvement in energy efficiency of 35 %). "Accurate property data are essential for optimizing efficiency, and the entire NIST refrigerants program over its 14 year duration would be paid for by a single years savings resulting from a single percentage point gain in energy efficiency for this single class (non-CFC chillers) of refrigeration equipment," says a new technical paper from NIST. For a copy of this paper (26-01), contact Sarabeth Harris, NIST, MC104, Boulder, CO 80305-3328; (303) 497-3237; sarabeth @boulder.nist.gov. The REFPROP database may be ordered via the World Wide Web at http://www.nist.gov/srd/nist23.htm. Media Contact: Fred McGehan, (303) 497-3246; mcgehan@boulder.nist.gov. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion