Guest speakers from the Climalife's November customer event.
Throughout this year there have been several challenges in the market that have been vastly different from those experienced in 2018. Allan Harper, the managing director of Climalife UK said more challenges lay ahead in 2020 and 2021 with energy efficiency, climate change and F-Gas having a part to play in the choice of refrigerants in the future.
Mr Harper commented: “The objective of the event was to refocus on where we are now and to support our customers in the coming F-Gas challenges by bringing together some of our suppliers who are considered to be leaders in their markets.
“Lower GWP refrigerants such as R448A, R449A and R513A have quickly established themselves in the market but we now need to step up the adoption of A2L refrigerants. Also important is the use of leak detection equipment, and suitable lubricants for equipment to ensure the efficiency of installed systems.”
Peter Dinnage, technical director, gave an update on F-Gas and details of bans that apply in January for refrigerants with a GWP >2500 and the options available for end users that still have equipment running on the high GWP refrigerants.
Pawel Wisnik, Honeywell senior application engineer, presented Honeywell’s range of mildly flammable (A2L) refrigerants for refrigeration and air conditioning, in particular Solstice L40X (R455A) and Solstice ze (R1234ze). These products represent long-term solutions to build and operate safe and environmentally preferable systems for commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning chiller applications.
The presentation focused on the practical implementation of Honeywell’s A2L refrigerants based on the guidance of the EN378 standard and the use of qualified components. He gave numerous references across the European market and presented an eco-efficiency model for comparison of commercial refrigeration architectures.
Mr Wisnik said: “This evaluation model can be used by operators, contractors and engineering offices to measure both the total equivalent warming impact, or TEWI, and the total cost of ownership of their various alternatives before making an investment into a refrigeration system. These parameters are essential to assess the impact of systems on the environment and on the overall spend.
“Applying an eco-efficiency model helps make the best specific decisions and choices for system architectures and technologies to be implemented.”
Mark Hughes from Chemours gave an update on how the market is implementing A2L OpteonTM XL HFO blends with success stories and case histories. He was very clear with the message that “with the upcoming bans on high GWP HFCs such as R404A, OEMs and end users need to focus carefully on what solutions they choose for the future.”
Whilst Neil Roberts from Chemours talked about reducing climate change emissions from commercial refrigeration and presented an ‘’apples vs. apples’’ comparison of the various F-Gas solutions showing why Opteon XL very low GWP blends have the best combination of life cycle costs and emissions performance in commercial refrigeration.
Colin Anderson from Bacharach spoke about the importance of leak detection equipment for safety, legislative conformance, environmental and economic reasons. All of which are important with whichever refrigerant is used. The different types of leak detection available from Bacharach were covered.
Bert Jan Hermsen and Laurent Guillot from Exxon Mobil recapped the role of the lubricant in a refrigeration system and highlighted the areas where lubricants can impact the refrigeration system’s overall efficiency. They then went on to explain how different lubricant technologies can bring their own benefits.
Dave Richards, head of sales for Climalife UK presented details of other Low GWP refrigerants in the range along with other energy saving heat transfer fluids, cleaning products and other components.
Allan Harper wrapped up the day, saying: “we have had a great turnout from contractors and distributors today, who are better informed on refrigerants they should be looking at for new equipment and how we can all make a difference to energy efficiency.”
With the pressure of a net-zero future looming over all industries events like this are important to show the difference the sector can make in improving carbon emissions.