REFRIGERANTS


ChatGPT: a new Oracle?


Professor Dick Powell of Refrigerant Solutions engages ChatGPT in conversation to see how accurate this popular artificially intelligent chat app really is.


T


he ancient Greek oracles, priestesses through whom the gods supposedly relayed their divine advice to mortals,


were renowned across the Greek, and subsequently the Roman, Empires. The most famous was the Oracle at Delphi, where the priestess, known as the Pythia, seemingly possessed in a trance by Apollo, would deliver advice and prophecies to those properly prepared by the temple priests after, of course, having made a suitably substantial offering. A theory, first suggested in the 19th Century, proposed that the Pythia’s utterances were made under the influence of hydrocarbon gases such as ethylene seeping from a vent opening into the cavern, the Adyton, where she sat on a tripod. A 2002 multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed study, published in the Journal of Clinical Toxicology, supported this idea, although it has been challenged. Interestingly, visitors to the Oracle in Antiquity remarked upon the sweet smell, which would be consistent with ethylene. This gas, known to our industry as the


natural, low temperature refrigerant, R1150, can affect human consciousness and was used as an anaesthetic in the mid-20th century, but was later replaced by safer, non-flammable and more potent fluorinated products. Following the recent release by OpenAI of the ChatGPT AI app perhaps we now have the modern equivalent of the Delphic Oracle which we can access on our laptops without the long and dangerous journeys faced by the ancient Greeks. In response to


20 March 2023 • www.acr-news.com


typed questions, ChatGPT scans the internet for information to provide coherent and consistent answers, which can be mini-essays depending upon the query, raising concern in the media that less-conciencious students would use the app to write their assignments. But can the app be trusted to provide


accurate answers? I feel it timely to explore the scope and limitations of ChatGPT when consulted about refrigerants. Simply typing in ‘natural refrigerants’


produced the following reasonable reply: "Natural refrigerants are substances that are used as a coolant in refrigeration and air conditioning systems that are not harmful to the environment. Examples of natural refrigerants include carbon dioxide (CO2 and propane (C3


), ammonia (NH3 H8 ). These refrigerants have


a lower global warming potential (GWP) compared to synthetic refrigerants such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Natural refrigerants are considered to be a more sustainable alternative to synthetic refrigerants as they do not contribute to ozone depletion or global warming."


Personally, I think the term ‘synthetic’ can be equally applied to the so-called ‘natural’ refrigerants which are just as much products of the chemical and oil/gas industries as the fluorinated refrigerants. Typing in ‘HFO refrigerants’ evoked the following, which also wouldn’t be considered incorrect if presented in a student essay: "HFO (hydrofluoroolefin) refrigerants are a type of synthetic refrigerant


that are being developed as a more environmentally friendly alternative to HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) refrigerants. They have a lower global warming potential (GWP) compared to HFCs, which means that they have a smaller impact on climate change. HFO refrigerants are also non-ozone depleting, which means that they do not contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer."


Again reasonable, but since the answer lacks detail I next tried a more specific query – ‘What HFOs are being used as refrigerants?’ The answer that came back was: "Some of the HFO refrigerants that are currently being used or considered for use as refrigerants include: • R-1234yf: This is a HFO refrigerant that is being used as a replacement for R-134a in


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ChatGPT is a remarkable and entertaining development giving clear replies to simple questions based on information plucked from the internet in comprehensible, if somewhat


pedestrian, English.


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