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Between public safety and environmental protection: the Balanced Benefits of HFCs
Our present quality of life has been reached through the many developments of the past centuries, one of which is refrigeration and air conditioning.
Refrigeration is used to store food and medicinal products such as vaccines or donated blood, set the interior temperature of buildings and houses, and cool large IT and medical systems, among others. Nevertheless, using the benefits of refrigeration and air conditioning while ignoring their impact on the environment is not an option today.
Global warming has become a serious problem which cannot simply be overlooked.
What is often overlooked, however, is that 80% of the impact of refrigeration systems is indirect and caused by the energy consumption, while the direct impact caused by refrigerant emissions accounts for 20% of the impact or less.
Therefore, reducing the indirect impact due to energy consumption should be the highest priority for management of refrigeration systems.
But how can greater energy efficiency in refrigeration systems be reached?
By improving the quality of systems through matching and optimising the components which make up a refrigeration system, by improving the quality of unit insulation, and last but not least, by choosing energy efficient refrigerants.
So, which refrigeration fluids are available?
- There is ammonia, which is efficient, but flammable and very toxic, thus adding a 30 to 40% cost premium to integrate systems to ensure safety.
- CFCs and HCFCs are safe, efficient, and cheap, but ozone depleting and also potent greenhouse gases.
- Hydrocarbons, Propane, and Isobutane are efficient too, but very flammable and potentially explosive.
- HFCs, on the other hand, are energy efficient, non-toxic, non-flammable, non-ozone depleting, and readily available. However, they are greenhouse gases, although their impact on the environment is very low.
In refrigeration, there seems to be an inherent trade-off between environmental protection and public safety. This trade-off, however, must not be.
Even if all the HFCs used in refrigeration were to be sent into the atmosphere, their impact on global warming would, even in the worse case, represent less than 2% of the greenhouse gas impact.
What can be concluded? The conclusion is that to combine safety and environmental protection, positive action should be taken to limit and control HFC emissions from their applications. This is what EPEE is doing.
EPEE and its members are committed to reduce HFC emissions and promote the responsible use of HFCs by a series of practices along four axes:
1. systematic recycling of refrigerant fluids
2. improved tightness of refrigeration systems and refrigeration fluids containment
3. specific technician training
4. setting of standards for improved maintenance of refrigeration systems.
