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NIST in Your Refrigerator |
NIST has been helping to keep you and your food cool and has become a central clearinghouse for information critical to the refrigeration industry as it phases out the use of its traditional but environmentally damaging refrigerants. |
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has several unseen marks on your refrigerator. For one thing, NIST has helped the Department of Energy develop standards by which consumers can compare the energy efficiency and, therefore, the cost of operation, of different refrigerators. Moreover, if you purchased a refrigerator recently, it did not come with the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants that had been standard for decades. CFCs have been implicated in the erosion of the Earth's stratospheric layer of ozone molecules, which absorbs much of the sun's potentially damaging ultraviolet radiation before it reaches the ground. As part of a mandated phaseout of CFCs, NIST has helped the refrigeration industry adapt to the change by characterizing new more ecologically sound refrigeration fluids. The result is a critical database that engineers have been using to redesign the compressors and heat exchangers of new refrigerators. A longer term project at NIST involves developing advanced insulation and cabinet designs so even less heat will leak across the walls of refrigerators. In its low-profile way, NIST keeps your food cool and fresh. |
| Links: | Check out some of the ways NIST has been
collaborating with the refrigeration and air conditioning industry.
Browse around the division of the Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory where much of NIST's work on alternative refrigeratants is done. NIST's Building and Fire Research Laboratory performs additional work on refrigeration technologies. |