Sponsored by COMPRESSORS
18
Huayi talks green cooling
Pedro Olalla, sales director from Huayi Compressor Barcelona looks at refrigerants in compressors.
A
rtificially created for industrial purposes, fluorinated refrigerants represent approximately 15% of greenhouse gas emissions in industrialized countries. Compounds such as sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) or perfluorocarbons (PFCs) used in various industrial processes are especially damaging because they can trap heat in the atmosphere up to 22,000 times more effectively than CO2
and pollute for thousands of years.
The industry has been using significant quantities of fluorinated greenhouse gases for refrigerators, air conditioning, the production of aerosols and fire extinguishers, etc. In the European Union (27) alone, it is estimated the region exceeded 850m tons of CO2
in 2010.
The best known of these gases, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), led to a global debate over the final two decades of the previous century owing to its destructive properties regarding the ozone layer.
Its gradual market withdrawal since the
signing of the Montreal Protocol of 1987 and replacement by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), has only provided a solution to the ozone problem, but not for climate change.
Regulation 842/2006 of the European Union initiated a protracted legislative voyage towards greater oversight of fluorinated greenhouse gases. That text included a package of measures designed to contain emissions, as well as requirements to force gas recovery at the end of the useful life of equipment, to label equipment, and various prohibitions and restrictions on the market. The failure of the results led just eight years later to the issue of the new Regulation, 517/2014, currently in force.
-eq emissions
The highlight of this latest European regulation is the progressive reduction scheme (phase down), which provides for reducing the amount of HFC that producers and importers may market in the Union.
The goal takes as a baseline the volume traded in 2015, reducing it to 21% by 2030
under Regulation 517/2014, while the European
Commission can recalculate the schedule every three years starting in 2017.
The legislators also established a schedule of restrictions on the use of HFCs in new equipment, as well as expanding the scope of containment measures and new labeling requirements. Overall, it is estimated that a reduction in the emission of these greenhouse gases of about 70%-80% in the EU 27 will result.
In the case of light commercial equipment and that for domestic application, once HCFCs have been discarded due to their damage to the ozone layer, and HFCs, due to their high contribution
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