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TRENDS FOR REFRIGERANTS

IN COMPRESSION SYSTEMS

Dr.-Ing. Jrgen SssAdvanced Engineering

Danfoss A/S, DK-6430 NordborgTel.: +45 7488 4187; mail: suess@danfoss.com

1. REFRIGERANT OPTIONS

The HVAC&R industry is constantly facing pressure to focus on the application of fluidsas refrigerants, which naturally occur in the atmosphere. The following picture gives anoverview of the presently applied refrigerants.

While chlorinated and party chlorinated refrigerants which impact the ozone layer of theearth are to be phased out, dominate HFCs and their blends in todays in refrigerationapplications, as they allow efficient and safe system operation. HFCs have compared tonaturally 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 theirapplication is still limited to certain applications or regions not allowing an universalapplication within the HVAC&R Industry. Recent developed new blends primarily asR134a replacements in mobile A/C systems have lower GWP values, but their viabilityas refrigerants is not finally confirmed.

Single fluids Blends Single fluids Blends Blends Single fluids Blends

HCFC and HFCpartly chlorinated

HFCClorine free

Low GWPR134a drop in

Naturalhalogen free

Medium and LongTerm Refrigerants

Transitional/ServiceRefrigerants

Refrigerants

e.g.R22R123R124

R142b

R22-based:R402AR403AR408A

e.g.R134aR125R32

R143aR152a

e.g.R404AR507A

R407-seriesR410A

e.g.Blend H

Fluid DP-1Auto AC-1

e.g.R717R290

R1270R600aR170R744

e.g.R600a/R290R290/R170

R723

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2. HVAC&R INDUSTRY AND GLOBAL WARMING

In the recent time the society focus on global warming has increased mainly due toextremer weather events and their discussion in various forums. The following picturegives a few of the know example, where global warming and climate change are lookedat in a critical way:

In these discussions it is often underestimated that the main contribution to globalwarming from refrigeration industry is actually not due to from the direct emission ofrefrigerants from the systems, but from the generation of the power, which is consumedduring the refrigeration systems life time. The HVAC&R industry takes in average 15%of the world wide electricity, which depending primary power source corresponds tosignificant indirect CO2 emissions.

The following chards published byAFEAS illustrate the ratio betweendirect in indirect emissions perapplication. Especially for factorymade systems with preferably lowcharge dominates the indirectcontribution clearly, while mobile butalso commercial systems still need tobe improved with respect to their

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leakage rates mainly occurring due to the way the systems are designed andmanufactured.

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 blendscan be expected to found in future.

The following table summarizes the global trends of refrigerants per applications andapplication area. In the coming period our industry will have to go through an evaluationof the naturally occurring substances as refrigerants and compare the systemsperformance 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 arttechnology. Performance in this context mainly stands for competitive Life CycleClimate Performance (LCCP) versus the cost perspective as any other approach will notresult in an enhancement of sustainability within The HVAC&R industry.