Commercial refrigeration

The successes of the Consumer Goods Forum’s five-year commitment to replace HFCs in refrigeration systems are recorded in a new publication.

A third or more of annual food production is never eaten, yet more than 50% of the wasted food could have its shelf-life extended by the cold chain.

Chemours is predicting that R449A, the lower GWP alternative refrigerant for R404A, will be adopted in more than 1,000 supermarket systems by the end of next year.

With the US facing restrictions on higher GWP refrigerants, ASHRAE is looking to modify its safety standard to incorporate “mildly flammable” A2L gases.

New initiatives on reducing the consumption of HFC refrigerants are expected to save the emission of more than 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2025.

In a move to encourage the adoption of R32 refrigerant, Daikin is to offer rival manufacturers worldwide free access to its patents.

Green Point, Bitzer’s compressor remanufacturing operation, is expanding its service in the UK to include other makers of compressor.

The cooling demands of large hyper data centres are set dramatically change the market for precision cooling over the next five to 10 years.

First it went tiny with the mini-VRV, now Daikin has launched an “invisible” VRV air conditioning system.

A Trane air-cooled chiller employing a new low-GWP refrigerant replacement for R410A is to be presented at the IIR conference in Yokohama.

HFO-1336mzz(Z) is to be promoted as a potential working fluid for high temperature heat pumps at this week’s ICR 2015 conference in Japan.

When refrigeration and air conditioning equipment is installed, serviced, repaired and dismantled, safety issues need to be carefully evaluated and considered particularly when servicing technicians have to deal with refrigerants with properties that they were previously not familiar with. It is therefore important that the refrigeration and air-conditioning industry adapts to both the technical and safety issues concerning these refrigerants.

Upgrading all existing room air conditioners to highest efficiency units, combined with the transition to lower GWP refrigerants, could save 25 gigatons of CO₂ equivalents by 2030.

Refrigerant producers, refrigeration equipment manufacturers and green groups have welcomed the US EPA’s usage bans on high GWP HFCs.

Europe’s aircon and refrigeration component makers have warned that only with a very focused approach will industry be able to achieve the phase down targets within the statutory time frame.

The conference was the largest event in the history of Centro Studi Galileo and the Italian Association of Refrigeration Technicians CSG has been able to celebrate its 40th anniversary with extreme satisfaction: 200 participants from 4 continents, more than 50 speakers and 26 Platinum, Gold and Silver Partners came together to support the Conference. Our industry will face huge challenges in the coming years and in response, the main theme of the conference was “Do not Wait – Act now!” (Per Jonasson President of AREA). Our industry will suffer if we do not act now; however if immediate action is taken, there will be innumerable benefits both for the environment and future technological evolutions and innovations. In particular for session 1 to 4, the key concepts from the Conference and the conclusions are therefore: zero use of refrigerants with a high Global Warming Potential GWP environmental impact, energy efficiency, and correct labeling. All of these actions are to be undertaken urgently in the coming months; further innovations will help and support European Companies and expansion into new markets …

The European Commission has opened a public consultation to evaluate the effectiveness of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.

A soon-to-be-launched mentoring scheme promises a unique opportunity for knowledge exchange between industry professionals at different stages in their careers.

A recently completed project to improve refrigeration technologies throughout the European food cold chain has furthered our understanding of the viability of alternative technologies.