Flammability characteristics of HFO‐1234yf

Abstract

A new low global warming refrigerant, CF3CF=CH2 (HFO‐1234yf), has been developed to replace HFC‐134a in automotive air conditioning systems. HFC‐134a is being phased out in the European Union due to high global warming potential. HFO‐1234yf is highly energy efficient, exhibits low toxicity, and can potentially be used in systems currently designed for refrigerant HFC‐134a with minimal modifications. Significant work has been completed to assess the flammability characteristics of HFO‐1234yf. Though it is flammable per ASTM E‐681, it is significantly less so than HFC‐152a which has also been considered as an HFC‐134a alternative. HFO‐1234yf has a relatively high lower flammability limit at 6.2 vol% in air. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling has shown it is very unlikely the lower flammability limit will be reached when the refrigerant is leaked into the passenger compartment of a vehicle. HFO‐1234yf also has a high minimum ignition energy (MIE) from 5,000 to 10,000 mJ which indicates there may be very few potential ignition sources in a vehicle. It also has very low burning velocity at 1.5 cm/sec indicating low potential for damage should an ignition occur. Several automotive industry groups have completed extensive risk assessments which have concluded HFO‐1234yf is safe to use as a refrigerant in vehicles. This article will review flammability test results and challenges that were overcome to measure flammability of a mildly flammable refrigerant as well as CFD modeling work for vehicle leakage scenarios. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2010

Analytical Method Validation for the Determination of 2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene in Air Samples Using Gas Chromatography with Flame Ionization Detection

“…(7,8) Atmospheric chemistry for HFO-1234yf has been evaluated experimentally and its lifetime was determined to be 11 days versus 14 years for HFC-134a. (9) HFO-1234yf also has zero ozone depletion potential and excellent Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP) compared to HFC-134a, which indicates it has the least overall impact on global warming in automotive air conditioning applications. (10) Though HFO-1234yf is flammable per ASTM E-681-04, it poses significantly less fire hazard than HFC-152a and HFC-32 due to its low flame speed, low heat of combustion, and its difficulty in igniting.…”

Measurement of vapor viscosity of R1234yf and its binary mixtures with R32, R125

“…Some thermophysical properties of R1234yf and other refrigerants are shown in table 1. R1234yf has the advantages of having the lowest life cycle climate performance (LCCP) (Koban, 2009) of low GWP refrigerants, low acute and chronic toxicity, low flammability limit and high minimum ignition energy (Wilson and Koban, 2009;Minor et al, 2010). It is an attractive alternative to conventional high GWP refrigerants used in M A N U S C R I P T…”

Statistical analysis of the energy performance of a refrigeration system working with R1234yf using artificial neural networks

“…Hence, nowadays there is an increasing pressure to address the problem of global warming caused by the use of this type of gases refrigerants. A promising solution to reduce Global Warming Potential (GWP) is by replacing R134a with R1234yf [20]. Some of the main advantages of using R1234yf are its thermodynamics properties, and its low toxicity.…”