4 Important Things to Know About Vehicle Refrigerant from Capitol Chevrolet in Salem, OR

 

4. How Does it Work?

Refrigerant is a substance that is highly pressurized throughout your vehicle and alternates from a liquid-to-gas state. The liquid is compressed and pushed into an expansion valve so that it can expand into its gaseous state. From there, it's pushed into the evaporator where it absorbs all of the heat passing through the evaporator fans- pushing out the cold air into the cabin. Then it's compressed back into its liquid state in the condenser where it cools off before going through the cycle again.

3. What it Was

Air conditioning has been found in automobiles since as far back as the late 1930s, but they didn't become even relatively common until the 1950s-1960s, and they certainly weren't assumed features in vehicles until the 1980s. These early air conditioning units used a refrigerant known as R-12, or carbon tetrafluoride. For those of you who remember chemistry class, R-12 is the perfluorinated counterpart to methane. This is interesting because, like methane, R-12 is an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Its high-performance made it an industry standard in residential and automotive cooling systems, but ultimately it posed too great of a risk to the planet and was all but totally banned in 1994.

 

2. What it (Probably) Is

Following the ban of R-12, the most common refrigerant found in cooling systems is known as R-134A. This alternative was much more environmentally friendly than the R-12 solution, and it doesn't sacrifice efficiency. There are retrofit kits available for most R-12 systems to convert them into R-134A systems. Remember, when dealing with refrigerant systems, it's always best to have a professional handle the process.

Even though R-134A is significantly better for the environment than R-12, it is still considered a greenhouse gas, and more and more levels of R-134A have been found in the atmosphere. For this reason, the EPA determined that R-134A would be phased out of all light-duty vehicles by the model year 2021.

 

1. What It is Going to Be

Following the order to phase out the commonly used R-134A, Honeywell and DuPont developed R-1234yf as the first in a new class of refrigerants. This new refrigerant is notable because it is not currently classified as a greenhouse gas, but it remains as effective as its predecessors. Even better, it is rated to be a nearly perfect replacement for R-134A, meaning that automotive manufacturers won't have to significantly adjust the designs or the manufacturing of their cooling systems. One notable difference, however, is that R-1234fy is technically a flammable substance- a title not shared by R-12 or R-134A. Luckily, it has been evaluated by a number of different associations to be safe for use in automobiles.

And there you have it! That's really all you need to know about vehicle refrigerants. Just remember, when servicing or evaluating your vehicle's refrigerant system, it's important to defer to a professional.