REFRIGERANTS A2L alert!
The HVACR market requires increasingly lower GWP refrigerants, many of which introduce some degree of flammability. Mark Hughes from Chemours explains how progress is being made in removing the barriers to early adoption of A2L refrigerants.
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n January 2015, the F-Gas regulations in Europe were introduced to move the market towards lower global warming potential (GWP) solutions to achieve important climate objectives. A cap and phase-down approach was introduced that limits the quantity of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that can be placed on the EU market via a quota system, expressed in tonnes of CO2
equivalent based on a
product’s GWP. This quota will be reduced year after year, resulting in lower availability and higher costs for high-GWP refrigerants such as R404A.
In 2014, before the F-Gas quota came into effect, there was significant pre-purchasing of refrigerant. This led the industry into a false sense of security regarding supply and price. It was only when this pre-buy was exhausted that the quota limit started to bite and it really hit hard in 2017. Following the dramatic cut to the F-Gas quota that occurred in 2018 (Fig. 1), there is another large cut due to make an impact in 2021 and the industry must be ready for this. The resultant lack of availability and price increases of the high GWP refrigerants drove the market to the lower GWP retrofit replacements – products such as R449A, R448A and R452A amongst them. Although the work has had to be concentrated into a shorter period than desired (it should have started in 2015) the retrofit wave is well underway. R404A, although still available, now costs significantly more than the replacements and will come under even more pressure as we go through 2018 and into early 2019. Interestingly, the next wave we see coming is replacement of HFC134a with products such as R513A, which has less than half the GWP. So why buy a replacement when the GWP of HFC134a is only 1430? The answer comes down to cost. The prices of HFC134a have been driven up by lack of supply
and now they approach levels above the lower GWP retrofit products. This is exacerbated by increasing demand for R410A – and herein lies a key factor.
R410A is a very good refrigerant, particularly in air conditioning and heat pump applications. However, there are no retrofit options available and even though recent announcements suggest this might change in the future, there is still a lot of hard work ahead for equipment manufacturers and possibly many years before a retrofit solution gets into the hands of those wishing to replace.
R410A in existing systems
The chart (Fig. 2) shows why we are feeling the effect on R410A even now. The average GWP of all products being placed on the market this year should be around 1200. Compare that to R410A at 2088 and with only the first new equipment starting to come in with R32 at a GWP of 675, this is still a big delta.
The next big cut coming in 2021 takes the average GWP down to around 900 and so we need to be ready, but how? Use the lowest GWP refrigerant suitable for your application that has the optimum balance of properties, including safety, energy efficiency, cost and availability. In many cases, this will be an A2L refrigerant. A degree of flammability is a necessary trade off to get the lowest GWP products. These A2L refrigerants must be implemented to have any chance of meeting the F-Gas phase-down. A2L refrigerants are lower flammability refrigerants that deliver the benefit of low GWP. They have similar properties and performance to existing HFCs and have lower flammability vs. hydrocarbons, thus allowing for a higher charge size. With proper training, A2L refrigerants
Table 1. 42 August 2018
www.acr-news.com
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