ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATION IN REFRIGERATION EQUIPMENT

When it comes to environment friendly refrigeration there are two main concerns:

• Usage of environment friendly consumables such as refrigerants and oils
• Energy saving ability.

Today, both these factors are considered meticulously as the world is in crisis due to overpopulation and therefore unsustainable consumption. Almost all countries are now working continuously to find better solutions to these concerns.

Some manufacturers are improving their currently available technologies and equipment to use a very low amount of refrigerant and different methods of energy saving, along with new safely factors, using many new inventions and technologies. As a result, we now have microchannel condensers, inverter compressors, different types of sensors, different types of motors such as EC motors and many other developments in these systems.

Speaking of refrigerants, as per theory the best are natural refrigerants since most of these natural refrigerants do not have any adverse effects on our environment. However, we are not in a position to use all natural refrigerants efficiently with our currently available technologies or equipment due to various reasons. Some of them have different characteristics which could give us adverse effects during usage with currently developed technologies. Therefore, manufacturers are facing many limitations. But to overcome this problem, the world requires new technologies and equipment. That may take a long time. At the same time there are many attempts to understand the mixtures of some other substances with natural gases which have little to no environmental effects. As a result of that today we have some refrigerants such as R32 are coming up even with some limitations. As a result of this, limitations are emerging in some refrigerants such as R32.

As a solution, at present we see some of manufacturers trying to adopt natural refrigerants into their equipment with some modifications. Consequently, some uncommon or different equipment which use these refrigerants are already available in the market. Among all the natural refrigerants, R290, NH3 and CO2 are taking the lead with latest improvements. Following are some of the current examples for anyone to understand the kind of improvements that are taking place.

Ammonia equipment are becoming smaller in size and more and more efficient with hermetic, semi-hermetic, reciprocating, screw, scroll compressors, microchannel condensers and many other components such as thermostatic expansion valves. Therefore, the usage of ammonia for very large systems are gradually changing as day by day most of the equipment reducing in size and capacity. Some may think that microchannel condenser are not suitable for refrigeration equipment with the experience they already have. However, now there are newly developed microchannel condensers which are used even for most of marine applications and many other robust equipment around the world. With these developments ammonia equipment manufacturers have concentrated on developing air-cooled type commercial and industrial machines.