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Member news: Koura introduces new refrigerant for air conditioning

Refrigerant manufacturer Koura recently introduced R468C, a refrigerant that could replace R410A in air conditioning systems.  

At the latest edition of the Purdue conferences (soon to be online on the IIR website), three authors presented R468C, a promising alternative to R410A in air conditioning systems. 

  
This refrigerant, developed by Koura (corporate member of the IIR), has been classified as A2L (low flammability) by ASHRAE. Its critical temperature is slightly higher than that of R410A, but the other properties are close. 
 
R468C is a mixture of 42% HFC32, 52% HFO1234yf and 6% HFO1132a and has a GWP of 286. The high proportion of R1234yf could indicate that its price will be somewhat higher than that of the refrigerants it could replace. 
 
In a paper* presented at Purdue, it was found that R468C requires a higher refrigerant flow (between 30% and 60%) for the same superheat temperature and saturated suction temperature, which translates into 30% to 57% higher cooling capacity but about 10% lower COP compared to R410A.

 

*Matin Ghadiri, Christian K. Bach, Craig R. Bradshaw. R468C as a Low-GWP Replacement of R410A in Fin-and-Tube Evaporators. Link. Also available in FRIDOC.