TRENDS FOR REFRIGERANTS IN COMPRESSION SYSTEMS

Dr.-Ing. Jrgen Sss Advanced Engineering Danfoss A/S, DK-6430 Nordborg Tel.: +45 7488 4187; mail: suess@danfoss.com

1. REFRIGERANT OPTIONS The HVAC&R industry is constantly facing pressure to focus on the application of fluids as refrigerants, which naturally occur in the atmosphere. The following picture gives an overview of the presently applied refrigerants.

Refrigerants

Transitional/Service Refrigerants

Medium and Long Term Refrigerants

HCFC and HFC

partly chlorinated

HFC
Clorine free

Low GWP
R134a drop in

Natural
halogen free

Single fluids e.g. R22 R123 R124 R142b

Blends R22-based: R402A R403A R408A

Single fluids e.g. R134a R125 R32 R143a R152a

Blends e.g. R404A R507A R407-series R410A

Blends e.g. Blend H Fluid DP-1 Auto AC-1

Single fluids e.g. R717 R290 R1270 R600a R170 R744

Blends e.g. R600a/R290 R290/R170 R723

While chlorinated and party chlorinated refrigerants which impact the ozone layer of the earth are to be phased out, dominate HFCs and their blends in todays in refrigeration applications, as they allow efficient and safe system operation. HFCs have compared to naturally occurring fluids typically a significantly higher global warming potential. Therefore they are presently under criticism. Natural occurring fluids like hydro carbons, carbon dioxide and ammonia are already widely used as refrigerants, but their application is still limited to certain applications or regions not allowing an universal application within the HVAC&R Industry. Recent developed new blends primarily as R134a replacements in mobile A/C systems have lower GWP values, but their viability as refrigerants is not finally confirmed.

2. HVAC&R INDUSTRY AND GLOBAL WARMING In the recent time the society focus on global warming has increased mainly due to extremer weather events and their discussion in various forums. The following picture gives a few of the know example, where global warming and climate change are looked at in a critical way:

In these discussions it is often underestimated that the main contribution to global warming from refrigeration industry is actually not due to from the direct emission of refrigerants from the systems, but from the generation of the power, which is consumed during the refrigeration systems life time. The HVAC&R industry takes in average 15% of the world wide electricity, which depending primary power source corresponds to significant indirect CO2 emissions. The following chards published by AFEAS illustrate the ratio between direct in indirect emissions per application. Especially for factory made systems with preferably low charge dominates the indirect contribution clearly, while mobile but also commercial systems still need to be improved with respect to their

leakage rates mainly occurring due to the way the systems are designed and manufactured. Over the last years continuous efforts were made to find new alternative refrigerants, but as the possibilities of the periodic systems of elements are limited, only new blends can be expected to found in future. The following table summarizes the global trends of refrigerants per applications and application area. In the coming period our industry will have to go through an evaluation of the naturally occurring substances as refrigerants and compare the systems performance with the one of systems using HFCs as refrigerants.

In this process the recommendation has to be that no refrigeration technologies get introduced to the market, which do not reach the performance of the state of the art technology. Performance in this context mainly stands for competitive Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP) versus the cost perspective as any other approach will not result in an enhancement of sustainability within The HVAC&R industry.