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In recent years, new fluids with a low global warming potential have been developed. These fluids are called hydrofluoro- and hydrochlorofluoroolefins (HFO and HCFO’s, respectively) and are developed as foam blowing agents, fire distinguishers, and working fluids for refrigeration, air conditioning, and heat pump systems. Furthermore, they are also suited for low temperature organic Rankine system machinery.

Hydro(chloro)fluoroolefins are unsaturated organofluorine compounds composed of hydrogen, fluorine, (chlorine) and carbon atoms. Some of the new fluids are just different isomers of the already existing ones. The isomers can differ in the orientation of hydrogen atoms and the trifluoromethyl groups. Although the difference between the isomers is subtle, their thermodynamic properties differ significantly. For example, the normal boiling points of HFO-1336mzz-Z and HFO-1336mzz-E are 33.4 °C and 7.5 °C and the critical temperatures 171.4 °C and 130.2 °C, respectively. In this case, the difference in thermodynamic properties of these isomers is mainly due to the difference in the polarity of the two molecules; the trans-isomer has a dipole moment close to 0 and thus is hardly polar, while the cis-isomer has a dipole moment of 3.2 Debye, which is well above the threshold whereby polar forces become significant.

Now the Hydrofluoroolefins Add-on of FluidProp has been updated and extended with new fluids. The new fluid package consists of the following fluids:

The hydro(chloro)fluoroolefines are available for the freeStanMix, StanMix, and PCP-SAFT thermodynamic models in FluidProp. A limited set of these fluids are also available in the RefProp 10 Add-on (see overview of fluids on the FluidProp page).