Study of Performance of Binary Mixture of R134a and R161 as a Substitution of R134a in a Domestic Refrigerator Mr. Subodh S. Deshpande Department of Mechanical Engineering M.G.M.s College of Engineering Nanded-431606, India Asst. Prof. D. N. Hatkar Department of Mechanical Engineering M.G.M.s College of Engineering Nanded-431606, India Abstract— In this paper, a detailed study of hydrocarbon refrigerants R134a and R161 is performed. The mixture after the theoretical study at specified temperature range in a domestic refrigerator is proposed as an alternative refrigerant to R134a. Study is performed by considering domestic refrigerator and its working conditions. The temperature range was set between -5⁰C and 50⁰C with 5⁰C sub cooling and 10⁰C compressor inlet superheating. The composition was selected such that the performance should not vary but the global warming potential must be lowered. The main objective of this study is to replace the existing refrigerant without modification in the existing design. So, this study compares the performance, economical and environmental aspects of existing R134a and mixture of R134a/R161. Keywords—COP, Refrigerant, GWP, ODP, Montreal protocol and Kyoto ptrotocol. I. INTRODUCTION As we see the brief history of refrigerants, no refrigerant has made its firm position in the industry of refrigerant. The history starts with ether and now hydrocarbons are used. The major concern about the hydrocarbons is their flammability, global warming potential and ozone depletion potential. According to Montreal and Kyoto protocol the use of halons, chloroflourocarbons was banned serially.(John T. McMullan). And now the objective is to phase out the HCFCs also. So in order to achieve this objective there is a need of finding out the alternatives. R134a is a good alternative for the existing refrigerants as it is having 0 ODP. But the GWP value is very high (Wongwise et. al). So though the refrigerant is performing well with systems running on VCC it is lacking in full filling environmental requirements. In recent years, the study was performed for proposing the alternate refrigerants by using number of refrigerants like R290a, R600a, HFO1234yf, R152a, R161 etc. For example S. J. Sekhar et. al (2005) studied the performance of HFC134a/HC600a/HC290 mixture as a substitution for R12. Sad Jarall (2012) performed experiments by using HFO1234yf as a drop in substitute for existing R134a in a rotary compressor operated refrigeration system. And concluded with the results that states HFO1234yf has lower COP, refrigeration capacity but gives higher evaporation and convection heat transfer coefficients than R134a. A. S. Dalkilic et. al. (2010) compared the performances of various alternative refrigerants in a vapour compression refrigeration system. Results showed that HC290/HC600a (40/60 by wt.%) and HC290/HC1270 (20/80 by wt.%) are found to be the most suitable alternatives among the tested refrigerants for R12 and R22 respectively. Jianyong Chen et. al. (2008) proposed a new refrigeration cycle for residential air conditioning system using R32/R134a mixture. Results showed that (30/70 by wt.%) combination can be a strong replacement for R22. M. Wu et. al. (2014) studied the performance of refrigeration system by directly replacing R134a by R161. Results showed that the COP is more in case of R161 when the evaporator temperature is lower and it come closer to COP of R134a when the evaporation temperature rises. Recently, Prof. Zhao Yang et. al. (2015) experiments on flammability of R161 showed that the flammability range of this refrigerant can be reduced combining it with flame suppression inhibitors like International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT) ISSN: 2278-0181 www.ijert.org IJERTV4IS060632 (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.) Vol. 4 Issue 06, June-2015 507