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CO2 (The inconvenient truth) There are now better technologies than CO2 A
rticles have been published over the last 12-18 months raising doubts about the green credentials of CO2
(R744) as
a refrigerant due to its inherent poor energy efficiency.
This raises the questions of why did
the industry choose a relatively high total emissions technology to comply with the European F-Gas Regulation and should other technologies be considered before deciding on which low GWP option provides the lowest environmental impact and best value for money.
From a climate change emissions perspective, it’s obvious that any significant leakage of the high GWP R404A (GWP3922) easily outweighs any energy efficiency benefits seen over using R744. Of course, the issue when choosing CO2 R744 technology is that the equipment is more complex, more expensive and less energy efficient. This contributes to a higher 10-year Life Cycle Cost (LCC), but the EU F-Gas Regulations primary focus is low GWP not cost, so R744 appeared to be a good choice. Although R744 achieves the primary objective of lowering the total emissions below R404A levels, apart from matching cooling performance, R744 does not necessarily meet
16 June 2020 for retail refrigeration systems which Chemours laid out in a recent white paper.
any of the other desired criteria. Clearly there is room for improvement in the technology choice.
Very low GWP A2L refrigerants such as
Opteon XL20 (GWP 148) and Opteon XL40 (GWP 239) have been commercially available since 2016, with the first commercial
application installed in October 2017 at Park Cake Bakeries in Oldham (UK). This raised the profile of this alternative technology and led to interest from retailers for use in supermarket refrigeration.
The use of Opteon XL refrigerants is now a reality with installations made during 2019 by
loads of 160 kW medium temperature/30 kW low temperature). 10-Year Total Emissions (TeqCO2
) comparison for a standard supermarket format (~2000m² sales area with design
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