OT- A/C low on freon?

[gustafson]

your cat hasn't figured this one out yet??

I have dogs, for some reason you provide them with a perfectly air conditioned house and they sit in the sunny spot

 

[gustafson]

Just for fun, compare the numbers for R-22 vs Propane.

Paul

Lessee, atomize propane in the passenger compartment and accidentally provide a spark

Fill a car with Ammonia for a few minutes and see who gets out alive.

Freon was a miracle back in the day, non flammable and non poisonous

I am interested to see how the CO2 systems pan out long term, if only because it will drive the patent attorneys crazy 'wait, what we cannot patent CO2?'

 

[thermite]

I am interested to see how the CO2 systems pan out long term, if only because it will drive the patent attorneys crazy 'wait, what we cannot patent CO2?'

The Corps of Engineers had field-mobile CO2 production plants as well as Oxygen & Acetylene. All part of the same half a year long training course

We didn't need to deploy those to 'nam, as the French had equipped the breweries to recover CO2 from stack gases from burning rice-hulls. Needless to say, it didn't require very high purity, so discharge of a fire extinguisher so filled was accompanied by the rather pleasant aroma of toasted rice bran similar to certain brands of green tea!

CO2 is not likely to make it in the mass market. It has been working for over a decade in test automobiles, but there are tough downsides. Aside from expensive to deal with working temps and pressures, long before anywhere near close to a suffocation level, a side-effect is that it takes very, very little leaked CO2 to mess-up a human's breathing-rate triggering system to an uncontrollable panic and anxiety level. And then.. the political landscape is ALREADY spring-loaded against CO2-anything.

Old stuff. No new ways around it. Yet.

Now.. if some bright lab-rat can develop a phase-change refrigerant that decomposes when leaked into totally innocuous products, non-toxic, and already common in the pedosphere?

It will probably do so explosively! .. or crazy-glue yer bare feet to the floor or yerazz into a motorcar seat with a high degree of permanence. See Silanes. And Oh, BTW.. those have toxicity issues as well.

Still no free-lunch, dammit!

Back to the lab with you lot.

 

[gustafson]

i 'think' Mercedes has CO2 systems in current vehicles

 

[thermite]

i 'think' Mercedes has CO2 systems in current vehicles

It was Daimler-Benz that did the initial research, and ISTR starting with CO2 as much as ten years now ago in their R&D facilities.

Funny thing is, Google finds a short-ton of "announcements" of their intent from 2014-2015 as to plans for 2016/2017, and then seems to go dark? A deeper-dive than I have inclination to bother with would be needed find out if they actually DID it, and how it has worked "in the wild" and in dealer service costs.

UPDATE: Maybe not so much M-B.

Seems Denso has been shipping CO2-based units for several years already, AND for residential use as well as econo-box hybrid autos. More info is out there on Denso systems than real-world M-B, anyway.

http://www.denso-am.com/products/life-energy/co2-heat-pump/


If wishes were fishes, we'd want a Peltier effect that had high efficiency. Overall efficiency and usefulness is rather abysmal at present, but the only "leak" is in the pocketbook. Money for enough energy to power it!



I'd not actually rule that impossible, though.

"Nano tech" and the tools it has spawned for observation has been opening eyes on a great many things we did not understand - artificial photosynthesis to low-energy splitting of water into Oxygen and Hydrogen.

"Catalysts" - once relegated to "it works predictably, does not participate or become consumed - but we are not sure WHY" are of great interest.

Some now-known answers turned out to be rudely simple. Particle size and the outer-valence electron spacing of a given element simple.

There's another technological revolution already underway... biocides, active-protection fabrics and footwear, self-cleaning window glazing, artificial photosynthesis, low-energy splitting of water into Oxygen & Hydrogen, even MORE advances in solar and battery technology, graphene's new other-than-Carbon cousins...

"Interesting times". Much of it pretty well along towards "productizing", too.

Not as easy to decide where best to invest as it was in simpler "biotech" times...