All kinds of stuff was used for refrigeration, including sulfur dioxide and ammonia. Doubt that they were used together. Many of the fluids were toxic and probably one of the reasons for the switch to freon. Of course ammonia is still used in absorption refrigerators used in many RV's and industry. Doesn't seem to worry most people.
"Too much Mexican food will fill ya Too much Honky Tonk will killya "
Song: Too Much Album: Walk the Plank Pirates of the Mississippi
I was disputing the use of cyanide. Maybe what I said wasn't too clear, so I'll say it a little more forcefully. I suggest that no manufacture would produce a refrigeration unit for home use that uses cyanide. It just isn't conceivable that the public would accept such a product, but all of the A/C fluids were toxic or flammable before CFC were introduced. Nonetheless cyanide is certainly one of the compounds tried experimentally.
Sulfur dioxide along with ammonia, carbon dioxide and methylene chloride were the main fluids until cfc and some of these continued in commercial applications. I'm surprised that any company was manufacturing new machines for home use using sulfur dioxide in the early 50's. Based on my readings, most home appliance used freon at that time, having taken over from ammonia refrigerators.
My father worked as a refrigerator repairman for Sears a while before I was born. As near as I can remember from his stories, everything that he worked on was ammonia. We even had an old refrigerator that he had converted from ammonia to freon sometime around 1940. After a move, it sat without running for many years but was used continuously from around 1975 to 1990.
You were lucky, sulfur dioxide (btw it is SO2) is nasty stuff.
This is Turtle.
The Refrigerator and freezers during the 1940's and 1950's had these Types of refrigeriant in them.
R-12 R-22 ammonia Alcohol Meth. SO4
These were the experimenting years and all these types was used to see which was best. G/E Corp. used all these gases in refrigerators and Freezers and yes SO4 type refrigerators went in the residentiual homes during that time.
TURTLE
Ammonia...for starters.. Sulphur Dioxide...how about methyl chloride? Its how R12 came about. Frigidare corp, (Thomas Midgley Jr) and DuPont in the 30s came up with good old dichlorodifluoromethane...R12.
What you DO NOT want is the new refrigerant that is possibly going to be introduced to replace R134a. R152a....its safe..till your compressor burns out, or you spring a leak and get near it with any source of combustion..like plugging in something near it and you get a little spark, or its been leaking and your door switch for the light arks... POOF. Ward Wells, a senior engineer at DuPont says, that in tests it has produced "very forceful combustion" when ignited. Here is the complete article:
Chrysler made tanks of old gas units... Still service a few....still running strong...no cracks, no reason to replace em..
See the prior post about what was used and a basic history..
Now, Arkel Servel is still making resi units that use ammonia. Real popular in SoCal, and its a bitch when your gas bill in the summer exceeds the winter months. BTW...Freon (used to apply to only R12, now any DuPont refrigerant) is toxic in the sense that when you fail to follow proper brazing practice, you can make phosgene gas, and by itself, it will displace oxygen and you can literally suffocate in the stuff.
134a has its own issues...Propane is a hell of a refrigerant, and was actually used by many a hack to recharge older R12 units, particulary in automotive. And boy...thats just what you want up front under your hood....a couple of pounds of propane under 200PSI...
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