New Screening Method Identifies 1,200 Candidate Refrigerants to Combat Global Warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120919103614.htm

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To help industry find refrigerant fluids with low global warming potential (GWP), NIST researchers screened 56,203 compounds and identified 1,234 candidates for further study. (Credit: Kazakov/NIST)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) — Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new computational method for identifying candidate refrigerant fluids with low "global warming potential" (GWP) -- the tendency to trap heat in the atmosphere for many decades -- as well as other desirable performance and safety features.

The NIST effort is the most extensive systematic search for a new class of refrigerants that meet the latest concerns about climate change. The new method was used to identify about 1,200 promising, low-GWP chemicals for further study among some 56,000 that were considered. Only about 60 of these have boiling points low enough to be suitable for common refrigeration equipment, an indication of how difficult it is to identify usable fluids.

The ongoing NIST project is a response to U.S. industry interest in a new generation of alternative refrigerants that already are required for use in the European Union.