Natural refrigerants, as seen by end users

On 7 October, eurammon's "Future-proof solutions for Today" symposium was held in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The initiative for natural refrigerants invited members of the branch and its end users to an extensive programme of lectures to actively share their experience with applications using natural refrigerants. During the event, the initiative conferred the new Honour Award for companies and bestowed the eurammon Natural Refrigeration Award on this year's winners.

"It's no longer sufficient just to think about tomorrow", concludes Mark Bulmer, member of the eurammon Board and host of this year's symposium on behalf of Georg Fischer Piping Systems. According to Bulmer, the changeover from HCFCs to HFCs in the past was carried out without sufficient long-term planning, given that in some cases the refrigerants still had very high global warming potential. "We must think ahead and do whatever we can to develop even more environmentally friendly and energetically efficient solutions. This is why regular exchange is so important." The lectures presented at the symposium by speakers with a wealth of practical experience illustrated the possibilities available to companies today for using natural refrigerants in refrigeration and air-conditioning applications, looking at prevailing statutory framework conditions as well as current research and engineering work into new applications and developments.

Politics and practice

Information about thecurrent F-Gas Regulation and its implications for end-users of refrigeration systems was provided by Elisabeth Munzert from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Dr. Dieter Mosemann, eurammon's representative in the expert group reviewing the efficiency of the F-Gas Regulation in Brussels demanded greater political commitment to natural refrigerants.

Current end-user experience with applications using natural refrigerants in the food sector was illustrated by Robert Arthur from the British retailer Marks & Spencer, and Ryan McNeill from Nestlé's English branch in Halifax. Marks & Spencer wants to forge ahead with innovations and energy efficiency at two "Learning Stores" each year, bringing about 50% reductions in CO₂ by 2015. By 2030, the company plans to manage without HFCs completely, using CO₂ and hydrocarbons as refrigerants instead.

Nestlé presented a project based on thermo-couplings with steam. The solution aims to reduce local dependency on steam and use the waste heat from a refrigeration system. Refrigeration solutions with natural refrigerants are also developed by Currenta, a service provider for the chemical industry and associated sectors. The special challenges and solutions for central refrigeration systems with several tonnes of refrigerants were illustrated by refrigeration specialist Dr. Johannes Wilhelmi, taking the Bayer site in Leverkusen as an example.

Dr. Frank Bünting from the German Engineering Federation VDMA looked at ascertaining the life cycle costs of refrigeration systems. With a sample calculation based on the VDMA Standard 34160, he worked together with the refrigeration planning firm KWN Engineering to compare the costs of a direct R404A refrigeration system with an indirect R723/R744 system. Danny Heuvelmans from GEA Refrigeration Netherlands gave an informative overview of current developments and products for air-conditioning and heat pump applications also for smaller output ranges and physically restricted capacities.

eurammon Awards 2011 – now also for the first time with a company award

F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG is another end-user with consistent long-term plans. The company aims to replace all HFC-based refrigeration systems by 2015. eurammon has rewarded this ambitious project with its first ever company award.

The winners of this year's eurammon Natural Refrigeration Awards are equally ambitious: Niel Hayes from Colorado / USA and Behzad Abolhassani Monfared from Sweden convinced the audience with presentations about their projects on the "Study of Carbon Dioxide Condensation in Brazed Plate Heat Exchangers" and the "Design and Construction of a Small Ammonia Heat Pump". The third prize went to Steffen Benz from Germany for his work on "Experimental Studies and Simulations for Dimensioning a Diffusion Absorption Refrigeration Machine with Direct Solar-Thermal Drive.