The paper “The hunt for non-flammable refrigerant blends to replace R-134a” published in the International Journal of Refrigeration (IJR) has been named Best Paper for 2019 among 300 papers published by the journal in that year. IJR is published for the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) and the award, consisting of a certificate and $1500, will be presented at the quadrennial IIR Congress in Paris on August 21, 2023.
This collaboration between the Applied Chemicals and Materials Division of the NIST Material Measurement Laboratory (MML) and the Building Energy and Environment Division of the NIST Engineering Laboratory (EL) investigated refrigerant blends as possible low-GWP (global warming potential) alternatives for R-134a in an air-conditioning application; it identified binary and ternary blends that were nonflammable (based on a new flammability estimation method developed at NIST as part of the same project). Ian Bell of MML was the lead author, with coauthors Piotr Domanski and Greg Linteris of EL and Mark McLinden of MML. The work was sponsored by U.S. Department of Defense, Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program.