Abstract
The EU Regulation 517/2014 has recently been approved in a further attempt to curb the
effects of GlobalWarming. As a consequence, the refrigeration sector is moving towards refrigerants
with a low GlobalWarming Potential (GWP100) in accordance with the limit fixed
by these regulations (150). In this regard, the old refrigerant R152a attracts renewed interest
due to its low GWP (138) and its similarity to R134a.
The present work shows the results of using R152a in a vapour compression plant equipped
with a hermetic compressor and an IHX designed for R134a. The refrigerant was replaced
by a conventional drop-in process in order to carry out an energy comparison. The results
have revealed an improvement in the COP with R152a up to 13% despite a reduction in the
cooling capacity of about 10%. During the test campaign, R134a hermetic compressors have
been shown to be capable of operating with R152a.
