This is an incredibly difficult post to write. I want to go off on a huge screaming rant
about lies and stupidity but it would be a waste of time, so I won't. I really won't. The
heck I won't.......
OK, I have gone outside, fought some mosquitoes, shot a crow out of one of my pecan trees,
and feel a little better.
So, here goes:
Cue Jaws theme.....
R744 is here.
I'm not sure if its the newest refrigerant or not, and certainly its not the most dangerous
by much, but it has arrived with all its problems.
R744 is CO2. Yep, Carbon Dioxide.
Now, you can make almost any gas a refrigerant with enough engineering, but some are just not
worth the effort.
And this has to be right up there with one of those.
It has its advantages, of course. Its cheap, readily available, pretty much non-toxic in low
doses, although it will kill you quickly if you don't know its there, and actually rates
about as low as it gets on ozone depletion.
But, for so many reasons it is just a poor choice for a refrigerant. Especially for cars and
such.
Why? Well, for one thing it has a critical temperature of about 88 degreesF. I am not going to
go into what critical temp is, I'm going to include a link to a series of articles about that
sort of thing if you want to wade through the technical stuff.
Also, it can commonly have a resting pressure of 1500psi.
And, if it gets some "liquid"
trapped inside a closed off system the pressures can exceed 3000psi.
Mercedes is trying to put it in their cars due to government regulations. Because they don't
want to use what the government is trying to get them to use, which is R1234yf.
A real hells brew.
I'm going to post a second thread about that stuff in a minute.
There might be one upside to this, the condenser in the front of your new car, might tend to
act as a whole car airbag.
You hit something with that, it might blow the whole car backwards......
The reason I am writing this now, is that I just saw a small Coke cooler in the store with an
R744 sticker on the back.
It was one of those with the glass fronts that you reach in and get a cold drink out of. I
had no idea that that type system had gotten that common.
Talk about needing different service equipment....
One thing is for sure, you won't see anyone retrofitting an R12, R134a,or anything else like
that to the new gas.....
For now, there is not much about this that will effect us here, just be careful around a
wreck, or if you see a newish car in the junkyard. You DO NOT want to cut one of those
lines.......
Here is the link to a series of articles about trying to use it as a refrigerant.
https://emersonclimateconversations.com/2015/04/16/co2-as-a-refrigerant-series-introduction/
about lies and stupidity but it would be a waste of time, so I won't. I really won't. The
heck I won't.......
OK, I have gone outside, fought some mosquitoes, shot a crow out of one of my pecan trees,
and feel a little better.
So, here goes:
Cue Jaws theme.....
R744 is here.
I'm not sure if its the newest refrigerant or not, and certainly its not the most dangerous
by much, but it has arrived with all its problems.
R744 is CO2. Yep, Carbon Dioxide.
Now, you can make almost any gas a refrigerant with enough engineering, but some are just not
worth the effort.
And this has to be right up there with one of those.
It has its advantages, of course. Its cheap, readily available, pretty much non-toxic in low
doses, although it will kill you quickly if you don't know its there, and actually rates
about as low as it gets on ozone depletion.
But, for so many reasons it is just a poor choice for a refrigerant. Especially for cars and
such.
Why? Well, for one thing it has a critical temperature of about 88 degreesF. I am not going to
go into what critical temp is, I'm going to include a link to a series of articles about that
sort of thing if you want to wade through the technical stuff.
Also, it can commonly have a resting pressure of 1500psi.
And, if it gets some "liquid"
trapped inside a closed off system the pressures can exceed 3000psi.
Mercedes is trying to put it in their cars due to government regulations. Because they don't
want to use what the government is trying to get them to use, which is R1234yf.
A real hells brew.
I'm going to post a second thread about that stuff in a minute.
There might be one upside to this, the condenser in the front of your new car, might tend to
act as a whole car airbag.
You hit something with that, it might blow the whole car backwards......
The reason I am writing this now, is that I just saw a small Coke cooler in the store with an
R744 sticker on the back.
It was one of those with the glass fronts that you reach in and get a cold drink out of. I
had no idea that that type system had gotten that common.
Talk about needing different service equipment....
One thing is for sure, you won't see anyone retrofitting an R12, R134a,or anything else like
that to the new gas.....
For now, there is not much about this that will effect us here, just be careful around a
wreck, or if you see a newish car in the junkyard. You DO NOT want to cut one of those
lines.......
Here is the link to a series of articles about trying to use it as a refrigerant.
https://emersonclimateconversations.com/2015/04/16/co2-as-a-refrigerant-series-introduction/
