Reduction of Fuel Consumption in Air Conditioning Systems

One of the issues currently being discussed in the debate over the reduction of global CO₂ emissions is the new upper limit for motor vehicles of 130 g CO₂ per kilometer. As a result, fuel consumption of vehicle air conditioning systems has also come under scrutiny.

To perform a meaningful assessment of consumption reductions, the operating conditions of an air conditioning system must be factored in. The most important boundary conditions in this context are the air conditioning and driving profiles whose influence on the assessment will be discussed below.

Measurements with a refrigerant circuit on a system test bench show that, with adapted measures, the energies requirement for A/C can by reduced by 15% to 30%.