Fridge of the future: ORNL`s refrigeration R&D
Fears about warming the globe may change the way foods are chilled. Concern about global warming, as expressed in the President`s Climate Change Action Plan of 1993, is the latest motivation for putting future American refrigerators and freezers on a strict energy diet. A current national goal is to design an environmentally sound refrigerator-freezer by 1998 that uses half as much energy as 1993 models. Interest in designing a more energy-efficient refrigerator is not new. It first became a goal almost 20 years ago. In the 1970`s the United States was relying on increasingly unstable supplies of imported oil for fuel, and energy prices began to rise. Utilities balked at building additional power plants because of rising costs and investment risks. As a result, a premium was placed on developing energy-efficient appliances, culminating in the passage of the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987. In the late 1980`s refrigerator design was again a target of engineers because of the need to change the refrigerant and insulation used. The reason: the Montreal Protocol called for phasing out of substances containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the year 2000 because they were thought to be destroying the earth`s stratospheric ozone layer. Ozone shields humans from solar rays that can cause skin cancer and cataracts. Among the CFCs to be phased out are common refrigerants like R-12 and the refrigerator insulation blowing agent R-11.
- OSTI ID:
- 254567
- Journal Information:
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review, Vol. 28, Issue 2-3; Other Information: PBD: 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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