Chemours argues for prioritising energy efficiency in sub 300 GWP systems
Mark Hughes of Chemours told that an industry-wide shift to lower GWP refrigerants would require new ways of thinking about engineering priorities. This focus on moving to lower GWP refrigerants has been a central focus for the HVACR industry to meet legal targets set out in the EU and UK’s F-Gas regulations.
However, the next stage of product innovation and system development would need to prioritise operational efficiency alongside curbing GWP values of a refrigerant, Mr Hughes said. There would be both an economic and environmental benefit to thinking holistically beyond the specific GWP of a product to how it works with cooling systems and components in a wider estate.
He argued that drive for energy efficiency performance improvements can have a more significant impact on cutting carbon than the reduction of direct greenhouse emissions once GWP levels are under 300.
The comments were made in the second of a three-part CoolingCast focused on 15 years of estate cooling transformation at Asda.
Mr Hughes was speaking along with Brian Churchyard, the company’s senior manager for Engineering, Net Zero and Energy, about their work together with a group of suppliers trialling different solutions such as HFO refrigerants at Asda.
With HFO refrigerants having a higher GWP level than a solution such as CO2, the group of suppliers focused on the potential benefits of using the refrigerant with systems that can reduce overall energy requirements in Asda’s estate.
Mr Hughes said that the energy focus not only ensured a case for improved environmental impact, but also delivered reduced operating costs to the retailer.
He said: “We talked more and more not about GWP, but global warming actually. In other words what was being put out into the environment through the energy used to drive the system. So a lot of work had to be done around that.”
This included reviewing the safety impacts of adopting HFOs to ensure that Asda’s workforce and consumers were safeguarded from the refrigerant’s lower levels of flammability.
The field trials of a solution using R454A began in 2018 as part of the company’s continuing work to test multiple technologies for its estate.
A major driver for this work was the 2014 ratification of the F-Gas regulations These regulations are once again under review with the European Commission putting forward even more stricter phasedown targets.
Asda’s decision to continuously trial and review different refrigerants and systems as part of its ‘technology agnostic’ approach to estate management is intended to help ensure it can adapt to any possible changes in F-Gas requirements or other major environmental legislation.