The Chemours Company has announced that the Dutch retailing group Ahold has successfully completed its plan to retrofit more than 175 supermarkets across the Netherlands to Opteon XP40. 

The new low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant from Chemours has helped Ahold to reduce its CO2 emissions by over 57,000 tons per year without increasing their abatement cost, defined as the amount which has to be invested to save one ton of CO2.

Ahold began the project in September 2014 as part of an initiative to dramatically cut its CO2 emissions by 20 per cent relative to 2008 levels by 2015. The decision to transition its refrigeration systems to Opteon XP40 was made after an initial trial in which the new refrigerant was shown to provide a distinctly higher energy efficiency than the previously used R-407F and R-507A.

Ahold and its consultants, P W Vlaskamp B V Refrigeration Consultancy, Dordrecht, recently ran a series of tests to determine the effectiveness of the retrofit to Opteon XP40.  The results showed that retrofitting their refrigeration systems to Opteon XP40 provided an eight per cent boost in energy efficiency, which helped contribute to the 57,000 ton reduction in emissions.  It was also determined that due to the lack of abatement costs, the entire capital expenditure of the retrofit would pay for itself in under five years, with further financial gains being made as the systems continue to run.

M M A de Rooij from Ahold said: “To see these results has completely validated our decision to retrofit to Opteon XP40. We knew that XP40 would provide the environmental benefits as a low GWP refrigerant, but the cost savings and return on investment made it so that we could meet the increasing regulations while actually improving the performance of our refrigeration systems.”

Diego Boeri, vice president Chemours Fluorochemicals, said: “We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with Ahold on this project and we continue to see many other major supermarkets following their lead.”

Opteon XP40 (R-449A), the Chemours flagship non-flammable (A1) replacement for R-404A refrigerant, is approved by major equipment compressor manufacturers and has already seen widespread global adoption since commercialisation in 2014. XP40 provides a 65% reduction in GWP over R-404A, while improving R-404A system energy efficiency up to 12%. As a result of XP40’s strong performance in the field, and based on current orders and customer product testing, Chemours recently announced that XP40 is on track to be used in more 1,000 supermarket and commercial refrigeration systems worldwide by the end of 2016.

The Opteon range of refrigerants from Chemours was developed to help meet increasing global HFC regulations while maintaining or improving performance compared to incumbent products. The company has invested millions of dollars to bring these new products to market and will continue to invest in new products and additional capacity as the need for low GWP solutions grows throughout the world.