Investigation on seasonal energy performance of residential AC systems using R-32 a low GWP refrigerant.

Residential air conditioning (AC) systems commonly use R-410A refrigerant for the new systems. The R-410A refrigerant has high global warming potential (GWP 100 years) of 2100 and it is not environmentally friendly. Moreover, energy consumption of AC systems also indirectly contributes to the GWP. Thus, energy performance of AC system becomes important. This paper aims to investigate seasonal energy performance of residential AC system using R-32 as refrigerant. R-32 has much lower impact to the environment compared to R-410A. The investigation applied a thermodynamic simulation using EES (Engineering Equation Solver) distributable program. The energy performances of the AC system were evaluated in one year based on Bali-Indonesia weather conditions. The performance evaluations include power and energy consumption, coefficient of performance, and seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER). For comparison analysis, the investigation was also performed on AC system using R-410A. The results indicated that the AC system using R-32 could provide better seasonal energy performance than a such system using R-410A. Therefore, R-32 becomes supplementary promising refrigerant for residential applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]