"let's go make things out of egg cartons!"

[rone]

Two Mormon kids have developed a car air conditioner based around Peltier chips which could halve the fuel currently spent on running Freonrefrigerant-based air conditioners.  Thanks to bivaughn for the link.

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

I thought American cars didn't use actual freon any more, and that you have to go to Mexico to get it. (And that it's why car air conditioners don't seem to get the cabin as cold as they did back in the day.)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You're right:

In 1992, a new type of refrigerant for automotive air conditioning systems began to appear in new vehicles (http://autorepair.about.com/cs/generalinfo/a/aa060301a.htm). R-134a was introduced to replace R-12 [Freon] because R-12 contains ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). R-134a is ozone-friendly because it contains no CFCs. It is also nontoxic and nonflammable, and meets all of the Environmental Protection Agency's criteria for alternative refrigerants. By model year 1995, all new vehicles were factory-equipped with R-134a A/C systems because the production of R-12 was phased out at the end of that year.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

There's a black market in freon, though, because it's legal elsewhere and it works more efficiently.

[boutell.livejournal.com]

Er, as she pointed out. Must read carefully.

[bramsmits.livejournal.com]

Expect horror stories about R134a any day now, the patent's about to expire. At SEMA last year they were already starting to show systems based around alternative refrigerants (CO2 mostly) and the servicing equipment amd parts therefor. R134a plants are starting to go offline, the damn stuff's almost tripled in price over the past year or so. Wholesale that is, the consumer refill cans have "merely" doubled. Time to start stockpiling I think.