Describes the experimental investigation of the performance of a mixture of R142b/R22/R12 in a domestic refrigerator/freezer (RF) unit originally designed for R12. A top-mounted 510 l (18 ft3) was used for the tests. All refrigeration components remained the same throughout the tests. Only the length of the capillary tube and the amount of charge were changed to mimimise the energy consumption. The RF unit was fully instrumented with more than 30 thermocouples, two pressure transducers and digital watt and watt-hour meters. Finds that a mixture of R142b/R22/R12 (60%/25%/15%) known as R176, consumed 4.2% more energy than R12. As the concentration of R22 was increased from an initial concentration of 60%/22%/18%, the energy 29%16% the mixture had the best performance of only 0.8% increase in energy consumption over the baseline using R12.

KEYWORDS: Experiment, domestic, refrigerators, freezers, refrigerants, mixtures, performance, energy consumption, testing, R12, R176, replacing.