International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijrefrig

Concentration measurement of refrigerant/refrigeration oil

mixture by refractive index
Mitsuhiro Fukuta*, Tadashi Yanagisawa, Satoshi Miyamura, Yasuhiro Ogi
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Hamamatsu, 432-8561, Japan

Received 15 August 2003; received in revised form 20 November 2003; accepted 24 December 2003

Abstract
Refrigeration oil having good miscibility with refrigerant is generally used in refrigeration units. Precise measure-
ment of the mixing ratio of refrigerant to refrigeration oil is required for a sufficient understanding of the refrigeration
cycle. In this paper, refractive index is chosen as a property which indicates the mixing concentration of the refrigerant/
oil mixture. A laser displacement sensor is used to detect a change of optical path which changes according to the
refractive index of test medium. The refractive indices of pure refrigerant, pure refrigeration oil and refrigerant/refrig-
eration oil mixture are measured with several combination of refrigerant/oil. It is found that the difference of refractive
index between the refrigerant and the oil is sufficient for the measurement of the mixing concentration of refrigerant/oil
mixture, and that the refractive index of the refrigerant/oil mixture changes almost linearly according to the mixing
concentration. These data will be utilized for development of an in situ sensor in refrigerant compressors.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Mesurment; Concentration; Refrigerant; Mixture; Lubricant; Refractive index

Mesures des concentrations en frigorigène/lubrifiant de

mélanges à l’aide de l’indice de réfraction
Mots cle´s : Mesure ; Concentration ; Frigorigène ; Mélange ; Lubrifiant ; Indice de réfraction

1. Introduction increases, the viscosity of lubricant decreases sig-

In general, refrigeration oil of good solubility with
refrigerant is used in refrigeration compressors. The
solubility changes according to the pressure and the
temperature and it influences the performance or relia-
bility of the compressor as well as the operation of the
cycle. For example, when the concentration of refriger-
ant in the refrigeration oil stored in the compressor
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +81-53-478-1054; fax: +81-
53-478-1058.
E-mail address: tmmfuku@ipc.shizuoka.ac.jp (M. Fukuta).
0140-7007/$35.00 # 2004 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2003.12.007
nificantly and it causes changes of lubrication char-
acteristics and sealing ones in a compression chamber.
In addition, the oil concentration in the refrigerant cir-
culating in the cycle, which is termed the oil circulation
ratio, affects the pressure drop and the heat transfer in
heat exchangers. The measurement of the concentration
of refrigerant in the oil or the oil circulation ratio,
therefore, is very important to improve cycle perfor-
mance and to ensure the reliability of the system. The
most general way to measure the concentration of
refrigerant/oil mixture is a sampling method [1], but the
measurement is time consuming and reduces the amount
of oil in the compressor or cycle. Although one can
 M. Fukuta et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352 347

used in this study because the measurement can be done

Nomenclature
d sensor output, m
h depth of test medium, m
‘ distance from sensor to glass, m
n refractive index
t glass thickness
x distance, m

angle of optical path, rad
Subscript
1 air
2 glass
3 test medium
estimate the concentration based on the solubility data
by measuring the pressure and the temperature, there is
no guarantee that the condition is always saturated or
sometimes there is no solubility data from oil manu-
facturers. Because of such shortcomings of these meth-
ods, real-time measurements of the concentration of
refrigerant/oil mixture have been developed.
Certain sensors and principles for the real-time
measurement were proposed, which detect viscosity
[2,3], acoustic velocity [2,4–8], density [2,8–10], absorp-
tion of light [11–13] or dielectric constant [11,14].
Refractive index [11,15,16] is one of the properties
which changes according to the concentration of refrig-
erant/oil mixture. So far, however, no sufficient data of
the refractive index of the refrigerant/oil mixture has
been published. In this study, the refractive index of
refrigerant/oil mixture is measured by utilizing a laser
displacement sensor. The characteristics of a refractive
index sensor incorporating the displacement sensor, and
the change of refractive index against the concentration
of refrigerant/oil mixture are discussed. In addition, the
influence of oil degradation on the measurement is dis-
cussed from the view point of practical applications of
the sensor to the cycle.
relatively easily with high accuracy although it is not
suitable for miniaturization of the sensor.
Fig. 1 shows the principle of the measurement. The
test medium, refrigerant/oil mixture, is stored in the
pressurized chamber having a glass window. The inci-
dent light enters the test medium through the glass and
reflects off the surface of a base plate. When the incident
beam passes through interfaces between air and
the glass, and between the glass and the test medium,
the refraction occurs because of different refractive
indices of air, glass and test medium. The optical path
changes according to the refractive index of the test
medium as shown in Fig. 1. In order to detect the
change of optical path, a laser displacement sensor is
used in this study. The sensor is the diffusion reflection
type, which detects the diffusion light at the reflection
surface by collecting the light on a CCD with a com-
pound lens. However, when the incident light passes
through the liquid test medium, the diffusion reflection
also occurs in the test medium and the diffusion reflec-
tion on the surface is hardly detected. The sensor,
therefore, is used as a regular reflection type with an
inclined position, which detects the regular reflection
beam as shown in Fig. 2. The regular reflection light
reflects with the same angle,
, as the incident light on
the base surface, then it is collected on the CCD by the
lens. The sensor output shows the distance of d in Fig. 2.
Fig. 1. Principle of measurement.

2. Experiment

2.1. Principle of measurement

The methods to detect the refractive index are classi-

fied mainly into three methods. One is to detect a
change of light intensity through a sensor [17,18], the
second is to detect a change of optical path [15,19,20]
and the third is to detect the critical angle [11,16,21].
The purpose of this study is to provide fundamental
data which is useful in the development of the sensor.
The method by detecting the optical path, therefore, is Fig. 2. Detection of regular reflection.
348 M. Fukuta et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352

Fig. 4. Experimental setup.

Fig. 3. Actual and imaginary optical paths in sensor unit.
Fig. 3 illustrates geometrically the actual optical path
and an imaginary one for the output of the sensor. The
refraction angles follow Snell’s law as expressed by Eq. (1).
n1 sin
1 ¼ n2 sin
2 ¼ n3 sin
3 ð1Þ
where, n1, n2 and n3 are the refractive indices of air, glass
and test medium, i.e. refrigerant/oil mixture, and
1,
2
and
3 are the angles of light in each substance, respec-
tively. In Fig. 3, the distance x is expressed as follows.
x ¼ 2ð‘tan
1 þ ttan
2 þ htan
3 Þ ð2Þ
where ‘ is distance from the sensor to the glass surface, t
is the glass thickness and h is depth of the test medium.
The laser displacement sensor detects a reflection sur-
face at an imaginary point (A) in Fig. 3, then it outputs
the distance d. The relationship between d and x is
expressed by Eq. (3).
x ¼ 2dsin
1 ð3Þ
With reducing Eqs. (1)–(3), the relationship between
the refractive index of test medium, n3, and the sensor
output, d, is obtained.
     
n1 n1
‘tan
1 þttan sin1 sin
1 þhtan sin1 sin
1
n2 n3
d¼
sin
1
ð4Þ
2.2. Experimental setup
Fig. 4 shows the schematic diagram of experimental
setup. The laser displacement sensor used in this study
has the measuring range from 25 to 35 mm with resolu-
tion of 1 mm. The laser is a semiconductor type and the
wave length is 670 nm. A refractive index sensor unit
(measuring unit) consists of the laser displacement sen-
sor, the optical flat glass (BK7), the test medium cham-
ber and the reflection base plate, which enables to
measure the refractive index under the pressurized con-
dition. The specifications of the measuring unit are
designed so that the range of the refractive index of the
test medium from 1.0 to 1.5 corresponds to as wide a
measuring range of the displacement sensor as possible.
The measuring unit is connected to a mixing chamber
with a stirrer and the test chamber is filled with the
refrigerant/oil mixture. The temperature of test medium
is controlled by an electric heater with circulating the
test medium by a gear pump, and is measured by a
T-type thermocouple with the precision of 0.1  C. The
concentration of refrigerant/oil mixture is checked by
the sampling method. In this paper, the refractive indi-
ces of several refrigerants and oils are measured and
also the refractive indices of their mixtures are exam-
ined. The refrigerants used in this study are R134a, R32,
R125, R410A and R600a, and the oils are PAG, PVE
and a paraffinic mineral oil. The concentration of
refrigerant ranges from 0 to 100% and the temperature
is from 30 to 50  C. In addition, the influence of oil
degradation on the measurement is checked from the
view point of practical applications of the sensor to the
refrigeration cycle.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Calibration of sensor
At first, the calibration of the sensor output against
the refractive index of the test medium is carried out by
using substances whose refractive indices are known.
The sensor output data obtained by the experiment and
the calculated one are plotted versus the refractive index
in Fig. 5. The refractive indices of alcohols, ethanol, 1-
propanol and isoamyl alcohol, are derived from a
property table [22], those of refrigerants, R125, R32 and
R22, are obtained from Refs. [19] and [22] and those of
refrigeration oils, naphthenic mineral oil, PAG and
PVE, are measured by a handy refractive index meter.
The refractive indices of the substances except the
refrigerants are given by those with sodium yellow D-
 M. Fukuta et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352
line (589.3 nm) at 25  C, and those of the refrigerants
are values under different conditions depending on each
literature. In Fig. 5, the sensor output is shown by the
relative value to that of air, and it decreases with
increasing the refractive index. The measured sensor
output shows good agreement with that calculated by
Eq. (4), although the measured value is slightly smaller
than the calculated one. The deviation is caused by the
compound lens which is not as simple as the one shown
in the previous figures, inaccurate angle at which the
displacement sensor is mounted, lack of flatness of
the base plate, etc. In this study, the correlation
curve obtained by the experiment is used to convert the
sensor output to the refractive index. The slope of the
curve shows sensitivity of the refractive index sensor and
about 0.07/mm and 0.12/mm around the refractive
indices of 1.2 and 1.5, respectively. Since the resolution
of the laser displacement sensor is 1 mm, the uncertainty
of the refractive index sensor is less than 5104 taking
into account the fluctuation of the output and error of
the calibration curve. In the present design of the sensor
arrangement, the measuring range of refractive index is
from 1.0 to 1.5. If the design is changed so that the
measuring range corresponds to the range from the
refractive index of refrigerant to that of refrigeration oil,
i.e. 1.2–1.5, it will be possible to measure the refractive
index of refrigerant/oil mixture more accurately.
3.2. Refractive indices of refrigerant and refrigeration oil
The concentration of refrigerant/oil mixture can be
measured accurately as the difference between the
refractive indices of refrigerant and oil is larger. The
refractive indices of pure refrigerant and pure oil,
therefore, are measured for several combinations of
refrigerant and oil. Fig. 6 shows the refractive indices
Fig. 5. Calibration curve. *: Ref. 19, **: Ref. 22.
349
of R134a and PAG oil against the temperature. The
refractive index of R134a is about 1.19, whereas that of
oil is about 1.45 and is much larger than that of the
refrigerant. In general, it is easy to measure the refrac-
tive index with the precision of 1103 and the refrac-
tive indices of R134a and PAG oil have enough
difference for the measurement of the mixing concen-
tration. Over the temperature range in this study, the
refractive index of R134a slightly decreases linearly with
increasing the temperature. The refractive index of PAG
oil also decreases with the temperature, but it is less
sensitive to the temperature.
The refractive indices of a near azeotropic refrigerant,
R410A, and its components, R32 and R125, as well as
that of PVE oil are shown against the temperature in
Fig. 7. The refractive indices of R32, R125 and R410A
are slightly smaller than R134a’s shown in Fig. 6. The
refractive index of R32 is about 0.01 greater than that of
R125, but the difference is negligible as compared with
that from the refractive index of PVE oil. Therefore,
even if a selective dissolution of R32 and R125 into the
refrigeration oil occurs, i.e. the concentrations of R32
and R125 in the oil are different, the error of the refrig-
erant concentration in the oil is less than 1% when it is
considered as the overall refrigerant concentration.
In recent years, R600a (isobutane) is used as a refrig-
erant in domestic refrigerators. Fig. 8 shows the refrac-
tive indices of R600a and the paraffinic mineral oil
which is used in the refrigerator with R600a on the
market. The refractive index of R600a is around 1.3 and
much larger than those of R134a and R410A. The
refractive index of the paraffinic oil is around 1.47 and
also larger than PAG’s and PVE’s. Although the differ-
ence between the refractive indices of R600a and the
paraffinic oil is smaller than that of the other com-
bination, it is enough to detect the concentration of
Fig. 6. Refractive indices of R134a and PAG oil.
350 M. Fukuta et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352

refrigerant/oil mixture. The refractive indices of R600a

and the paraffinic oil have the same tendency against the
temperature as the other combinations.
The typical refractive indices of refrigerants and
refrigeration oils measured in this study are summarized
in Table 1 as a reference.

3.3. Refractive indices of refrigerant/oil mixture

Refractive indices of a few kinds of refrigerant/oil

mixtures were measured with varying the mass concen-
tration of refrigerant in the oil. Fig. 9 shows the rela-
tionship between the concentration of R134a in the
PAG oil and the refractive index with temperature as a
parameter. The refractive index of the mixture decreases
almost linearly with increasing the refrigerant concen-
tration. It means that the refractive index is a suitable
property to detect the concentration of the refrigerant/
Fig. 7. Refractive indices of R410A, R32, R125 and PVE oil.
oil mixture in the whole range of refrigerant concen-
tration, in other words the measurement of the refrac-
tive index is useful for both measurements of the
refrigerant concentration in the oil and the oil concen-
tration in the refrigerant. The difference between R134a
and PAG refractive indices is about 0.25 and it corre-
sponds to about 3000 in the resolution of the sensor.
Therefore, the precision of the refrigerant concentration
of 2103 is obtained considering the fluctuation of the
sensor output and the error of the calibration curve.
However, since the accuracy of the sampling method in
this study is not sufficient, more measurements are
needed to get an accurate correlation between the mixing
concentration and the refractive index of the mixture.
The refractive index of the R410A/PVE oil mixture
versus refrigerant concentration is shown in Fig. 10 with
temperature as the parameter. It shows almost the same
tendency as that described for the previous figure. When

Fig. 8. Refractive indices of R600a and Paraffinic oil.

Table 1
Refractive indices of refrigerants and oils

Substance 30  C 40  C 50  C

R134a 1.213 1.206 1.197

R410A 1.186 1.175 1.163
R32 1.191 1.182 1.171
R125 1.181 1.168 1.156
R600a 1.314 1.306 1.297
PAGa 1.453 1.450 1.448
PVEa 1.443 1.441 1.438
Paraffinic oila 1.472 1.466 1.464
a
Refractive indices of oils depend on each oils; additives, Fig. 9. Relationship between refractive index and refrigerant
viscosity grade and molecular structure of the oil. concentration (R134a/PAG oil).
 M. Fukuta et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352
Fig. 10. Relationship between refractive index and refrigerant
concentration (R410A/PVE oil).
the temperature is higher than 40  C and the refrigerant
concentration is from 0.7 to 0.9, there is no data in the
figure. In this region, since R410A and the PVE oil used
in this study become immiscible, the mixture gets cloudy
like emulsion, and the sensor does not work under such
conditions.
3.4. Influence of oil degradation
Oil degradation and moisture absorption into the oil
occur in practical refrigeration cycles and compressors.
The influence of them on the refractive index is investi-
gated for the practical use of the refractive index
measurement. Fig. 11 shows the refractive indices of
PVE oils. The oils used here are PVE oil of VG68 as a
base oil, PVE oil with high moisture contents (500 and
1000 ppm) and degraded PVE oil whose total acid
number (TAN) is 0.25. Note that the vertical axes is so
magnified that the difference becomes clear. The refrac-
tive indices in case of the 500 ppm moisture and
TAN=0.25 are almost the same as that of the base oil,
although the refractive index of the extremely moist oil
of 1000 ppm is slightly higher than the base oil’s. The
result means that the concentration measurement of
refrigerant/oil mixture by detecting the refractive index
will be applicable to the practical refrigeration cycles
and the compressors. In Fig. 11, the refractive index of
PVE oil of smaller viscosity grade (VG32) is also shown
as a reference. It shows smaller value than that of the
higher viscosity oil (VG68).
Furthermore, the influences of flow and bubble exis-
tence on the measurement were investigated. Although
the output is slightly unstable by fluctuation of local
concentration of refrigerant/oil mixture when the mix-
ture is flowing through the sensor section, the flow itself
351
Fig. 11. Influence of oil degradation on refractive index.
has no influence on the measurement. On the other
hand, the existence of bubbles does disturb the
measurement and the sensor output becomes unstable.
4. Conclusion
The refractive index of refrigerant/oil mixture was
measured under pressurized conditions. Almost the
same output as designed was obtained with a measuring
unit utilizing a laser displacement sensor. The uncer-
tainty of the refractive index sensor was less than
5104, and that of the mixing concentration of refrig-
erant/oil mixture was less than 2103. For the combin-
ations of R134a/PAG oil, R410A/PVE oil and R600a/
mineral oil, the difference of refractive index between
the refrigerant and the oil was large enough to detect the
mixing concentration of refrigerant/oil mixture. The
refractive index of refrigerant decreases with increasing
temperature, whereas that of oil is less sensitive to
temperature. Since the refractive index of the refriger-
ant/oil mixture changes almost linearly according to the
mixing concentration of refrigerant/oil mixture over
the whole concentration range, the measurement of
refractive index can be applicable to the measurements
of both the refrigerant concentration in the oil and the
oil concentration in the refrigerant. In addition, even if a
selective dissolution of R32 and R125 occurs in the
mixing of R410A with the refrigeration oil and the oil
degradation occurs, the measurement of refractive index
is applicable to practical cycles to measure the mixing
concentration of refrigerant/oil mixture. In the next
phase of this study, we have a plan to investigate the
refractive index more precisely in the range where the oil
concentration in the liquid refrigerant is less than 1% by
352 M. Fukuta et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 27 (2004) 346–352
improving the sensitivity of the sensor to the refractive
index. Besides that, the development of a small sensor
for the in-situ measurement is also of interest.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Daikin Industries,
LTD. for providing the refrigerants of R32 and R125,
Idemitsu Kosan CO., Ltd. for providing PVE oils and
Mr. T. Sato and Mr. J. Iijima in our laboratory for their
taking data.
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