F-GAS
Sponsored by
Phase-down in the EU
John Poole of Refrigerant Solutions discusses the practical impact of F-Gas legislation and its relationship with global warming.
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e have to remind ourselves what the purpose of F-Gas is. It is not just
a number of collated rules to phase-down products which have a Global Warming Potential GWP), in particular HFCs, but was conceived as a way of contributing to the overall reduction in warming of the planet. But nowhere is an attempt in the regulation to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide from installations in the acr industry by increasing energy effi ciencies. In this transition period from high to low direct GWP refrigerants, to merely focus on the direct GWPs of interim products and ignore indirect global warming related to energy effi ciencies can be viewed as, at best, misguided. Those of us who truly care about reducing global warming and wish to make the transition from high to low GWP refrigerants with the minimum disruption to our way of life, may consider the F-Gas regulations a political betrayal of environmental ideals. Is ‘green hypocrisy’ too severe a criticism?
As anyone in the acr industry is
aware, the cutbacks in the availability of HFC-based refrigerants under
the F-Gas regulations in the EU are causing serious problems for users and consumers alike. The position is particularly acute in the case of existing acr installations which must have non-fl ammable refrigerants available in the quantities required in order to continue in operation in critical applications, preserving such things as foodstuff s and medicines. While appreciating that fl ammable and toxic refrigerants, such as hydrocarbons and ammonia, will play an increasingly wider future role, their use is severely restricted by safety codes and regulations, which in eff ect mean that such refrigerants are not permitted in locations easily accessible and in close proximity to the general public at large. This means, of course, that there is a vast amount of acr equipment in use today for which there is no choice but to use HFC-based compositions subject to F-Gas regulations. These same regulations are now severely restricting the availability of HFCs, a situation which
will get worse as these regulations are tightened over the next few years.
One inevitable consequence of the HFC phasedown under F-Gas is much higher prices and attendant shortage of supplies, which we have all experienced. A particular problem right now is the lack of an alternative for R410A, which is non-fl ammable. There are reports of the fl ammable refrigerant R32 being used to retrofi t R410A in existing installations, which is a dangerous practice, but there is no known non-fl ammable replacement. In addition, because of the rocketing prices of HFC blends such as R410A and others, it is hardly surprising that the result has been an infl ux of illegal blends. Much the
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