Research Proposal Presentation Title

Natural Refrigerants To Promote Sustainability

Student researchers

Mingyi Pan

Bin Zou

Ziyun Wang

Bingyao Mao

What is your research question?

Which natural refrigerant is better and more suitable for the Chinese communities and some possible barriers to practical implementation?

Research proposal keywords or concepts

Natural refrigerants, Chinese market, Future prospects of natural refrigerants.

How would you summarize your proposed research idea?

We emphasized the importance of natural refrigerants from the perspective of the damage to ozone layer caused by traditional refrigerants (Bolaji & Huan, 2013). We chose two popular natural refrigerants which are carbon dioxide and solar energy for comparison. Through the contrast, we also utilize the information obtained from interviews we conducted with Chinese middle class to analyze which natural refrigerant is more suitable for the Chinese market (Li-qun, 2010).

Where is the literature gap and how does your proposed research attempt to fill that gap?

The literature gap is there are not many studies analyzing the feasibility of natural refrigerants in Chinese market. Our research objective is solve environmental problems caused by the existence of traditional refrigerants in china.

We would attempt through interview answers to understand environmental and social needs, and we would give specific solutions. So as to meet the environmental sustainable development.

Why is this gap worthy of research?

Freon in refrigerants has a destructive effect on the ozone layer. Our research is based on research gap, which determines the necessity of our research, the harmfulness of natural refrigerant has not been widely recognized by Chinese people. Thus it is urgent to find an alternative refrigerant.

What future change could this research possibly contribute to, related to sustainability?

This research can give people a new way to explore the development of the future refrigeration system. For future life, we can develop a new idea of refrigeration which can utilize recycling resources for sustainable development and does not consume disposable resources in order to protect the environment.

What made your group interested in and/or what excites you about your proposed topic?

We were interested in this topic initially because we did not think that enough attention had been paid to the damage that fluorinated refrigerants made to the ozone layer. Based on the voice in society, we found that the protection of the ozone layer seemed to be given a lower priority than other environmental issues such as global warming. As we continued to work on this topic, we discovered that there are many natural substances can also act as refrigerants. That is interesting and meaningful to us to further study it.

References

Bolaji, B. O., & Huan, Z. (2013). Ozone depletion and global warming: Case for the natural refrigerant – a review. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 18, 49-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2012.10.008

C. Textor (May 28, 2020) Number of middle class population in China 2002-2020

https://www.statista.com/statistics/875874/middle-class-population-in-china/

Dilshad, S., Kalair, A. R., & Khan, N. (2019, December 20). Review of carbon dioxide (CO2) based heating and cooling technologies: Past, present, and future outlook. Retrieved February 19, 2021, from https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.1002/er.5024

Goyal, P., Baredar, P., Mittal, A., & Siddiqui, A. R. (2016). Adsorption refrigeration technology – an overview of theory and its solar energy applications. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 53, 1389-1410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.09.027

Liu, L., Wang, Z., Zhang, H., & Xue, Y. (2010). Solar energy development in China—A review. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 14(1), 301-311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2009.08.005