For an environmentally friendly and sustainable refrigerant should we back to using ethyl ether?

Question

Since there is a growing concern of petrolium shortage and ozone depletion, one of the few environmentaly friendly refrigerents used today are ironicaly petrolium based hydrocarbon like butane, isobutane, propane etc. Although they are environmentaly friendly, they are not sustaniable because they come from petrolium. The only chemical that has refrigerent properties I can think of that is environmentaly friendly and sustainable is ethyl ether since it is manufactured from alcohol. So why is ethyl ether not used anymore in refrigeration? Please keep the answers intelligent.

Usually refrigernts are stored in the abscence of oxygen anyways so peroxide formation would not be a concern unless there is a leakage. Even if there is a leakage BHT would be added to inhibit peroxide formation and mercaptans can also be added in small quantities to give it foul odor to indicate leakage.

4 hours ago

Or an alarm can be added using a zinc-air fuel cell modified for peroxide oxidation instead of ai

Answer 1

I'm giving my theory on this (and I'll probably be wrong but who knows?). As I read the back of say, shaving cream in a can or even whipped cream in a can, I see butane, etc as a propellant. That's actually the only way I can come up with that one. But I read something about the ether and it has a VERY low flash point which the others (petrolium based) aren't that close to the flash point as ether. And I think you're looking for diethyl ether as the official name. Alcohol can explode easy (as seen in my job when a low level laser accidently hit a 70/30 alcohol bottle and it exploded). But, yes, the gases such as butane have a flash point but not near to it like ether. The way things run now (refrigerators, air conditioners, etc) they run hotter (very much like computers) than before and can easily get to that flash point.

Of course, wiki is good for EVERYTHING so there's the source I read.

Answer 2

No.  Because a good refrigerant needs to be engineered to have a thoughtful combination of properties, not focus on one or two.

It should have low toxicity, low flammability, and cause little environmental damage.  People are making better refrigerants all the time, that improve all those characteristics.  Just because CFCs were bad for the ozone, there's no need to go back to highly toxic or highly flammable refrigerants.

Note that choosing a cooling unit with high efficiency (the most cooling for the least electricity/energy) is far more important for reducing global warming than whatever refrigerant is used.  A cooling unit contains a few pounds of refrigerant, but will cause the emission of many tons of CO2 over its' life.  With the phaseout of CFCs, that's by far the biggest environmental impact of refrigeration, and the most important thing to consider.

More here:

http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/phaseout...

http://refrigerants.dupont.com/Suva/en_U...

Answer 3

First of all, I would like to state that I do not buy the 'Global Warming' community, so I do not feel refrigerants are a concern.

Alcohol is, in fact, a wonderful refrigerant as well as a fire hazard.  Alcohol was once widely used for refrigeration, but was replaced by bromide plants and R-12/R-114 due to concerns for fire hazards.

If we were to try and find a 'Green' refrigerant, I believe that for a little bit of R&D, a large company could come up with a 'H2O' refrigeration plant.  This has been accomplished in many science fairs, etc. and is a viable alternative, but requires the use of more electricity to operate.  It defeats itself in purpose.

Good link: http://www.benjerry.com/our_company/soun...

Ben & Jerry Corp. looking to use sound as a coolant.

Hope this info is helpful.

Answer 4

yes. anything to help our Earth.