A year in new low GWP refrigerants development

At the end of the year 2012 we’ve been left with more questions than answers regarding the future of fluorinated refrigerants. Let us see if we have got all our questions answered during this year.

How well is the MAC Directive being implemented?

January 01, 2013 was not just a first day of this year, but also the first day when the use of R134a in mobile air conditioning (MAC) systems in new car models become illegal. This is dictated by the European Directive 2006/40/EC (MAC-Directive) which bans the use of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) with a global warming potential (GWP) higher than 150 in MAC systems. This ban was anticipated years before and many car manufacturers have prepared to it by adopting R1234yf as a refrigerant of a choice for MAC systems.

In the late 2012, Daimler AG – the concern that was among the ones who have implemented R1234yf in some of their new cars – have questioned the safety of R1234yf by presenting their “real-life test scenario” results. These results demonstrated that refrigerant, which is otherwise difficult to ignite under laboratory conditions can be ignited in a hot engine compartment, in contrast to R134a. Daimler reacted to its own finding by discontinuing using R1234yf in its vehicles [1] and recalling 432 potentially affected Mercedes-Benz SL-Class vehicles to replace R-1234yf with R-134a.

The findings opened up debates concerning safety of R1234yf and were used to support the call for a 3-year deadline extension in order to develop CO₂ as an alternative to R134a and R1234yf in MACs [2]. European Commission (EC) have been postponing this deadline from initial date of January 01^st, 2011 already 2 times and thus showed no will to extend any exemption on enforcement of MAC Directive, nor introduces new ones [3]. EC additionally pointed out that the Directive does not prescribe any particular refrigerant or MAC system. Instead, there were manufacturers who have opted to use the refrigerant R-1234yf [3].

As there is no legal framework for EC to take any actions against Daimler for not compliance with the requirements of the Directive, it has right to launch infringement proceedings against Member States (MS) not applying the legislation [3]. To avoid such measures, France has temporary introduced a sales freeze on some of Mercedes vehicles this August [4].

Considering a “very uneven picture” of risk assessments performed by different manufacturers, KBA – German Federal Motor Transport Authority – has initiated and coordinated tests on R1234yf safety to come to its own risk assessment [5]. The standard crash tests resulted in that “no adequate proof of a serious hazard in terms of the Product Safety Law occurred for the vehicle types tested here and now available on the market”. In these tests a selection of 4 vehicles were subject to a crash tests, which resulted “in two cases, hydrogen fluoride (HF) exposures were determined, and in one case, reproducible flammability were additionally determined, which point to risks with the use of the refrigerant R1234yf” [5] [6].

The report has got a lot of media coverage in articles with often controversial points of view, as for instance “Final KBA report confirms safety risk of R1234yf” [7] and “Refrigerant Denied By Daimler, Considered Safe By Federal Transport Authorities” [8]. On one hand, these results support Daimler’s statement, as R1234yf is concluded to be more dangerous than R134a and the use of R1234yf is thus questionable under the European Union’s efforts to increase road safety. On the other hand, all of the KBA’s tests that were based on the requirements of German product safety law indicated no safety concerns. At any case, now the EC plans to review the crash tests results during a number of meetings with the relevant stakeholders in order to bring the end to the yearlong debate [7].

In fact, R1234yf is not an only refrigerant option to consider in MAC systems. Daimler has decided to rely on CO₂ instead of flammable R1234yf and together with VW and Porsche have announced development of CO₂ technology in MAC systems [9]. They were later supported by BMW and Toyota. Considering that Toyota and VW are in the top list of car manufacturers by volume this means that CO₂ has gained more favor as a refrigerant for MAC systems, compared to R1234yf – the change which was hardly anticipated a year ago (see Figure 1) [10].

Is it clear when the new F-Gas Regulation will be released?

Discussions around the future F-Gas Regulation is another topic, which is under discussion through this entire year. The discussions were initiated by the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on fluorinated greenhouse gases regulation (F-Gas Proposal) [12]. The document proposed much greater measures to mitigate the usage of F-gases compared to the original Regulation 2006/842/EC from 2006, including placing on market prohibitions and phase out schedule.

Later during the year, European Parliament together with the Member States revealed Draft Report on F-Gas Proposal [13], that includes even stricter measures to limit F-gases, like for instance the ban on stationary refrigeration equipment that contain F-gases from 2020 (see Table 1for the entire list of proposed placing on market prohibitions).

Table 1- Placing on market prohibition under the amendments of Draft Report on F-Gas Proposal [13]

There is a hope from the European Parliament side to reach a decision with the Council of Europe in time to make new F-Gas regulations unveiled in 2013 [14]. However, before that, it is needed to reach the consensus on number of questions, where the most points of disagreement are the speed of the proposed HFC phase-down and the recommendation for a series of bans on high-GWP refrigerants and equipment containing them [15]. These bans are one of the key aspects for the Parliament as “from the Parliament’s perspective it is very important to have more clearly defined sectoral bans in order to give very clear market signal to everyone” said F-Gas rapporteur Bas Eickhout.

It is important for EU to reach agreement on ambitious F-Gas Regulation in order to support alternative businesses and enterprises to help them to become frontrunners in the global market and place “at the forefront of huge green technology revolution” [16]. Thus, we might expect F-Gas Regulation to be released within a few coming months.

What about other countries?

While EU is at the forefront of the F-gas mitigation, other countries are addressing this problem as well. In fact, more than one hundred countries have indicated support for including HFC control and phase-down within the Montreal protocol [17], with separate countries being proactive in additional measures. For instance, United States and China agreed to work together to phase down the production and consumption of HFCs [18]. However, the agreements are still needs to be transformed to the actions.

The recent Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) report argues that a dozen of the largest and most important US supermarket chains and retailers have not taken substantial action to begin phasing out HFCs or reduce the amount of HFC emissions leaking from refrigeration systems. None of the stores surveyed have a clear and comprehensive policy to begin phasing out HFCs, nor have they enacted state of the art maintenance and operation plans to significantly reduce HFC emissions, despite the committed to begin phasing out HFCs starting in 2015. The report points out the attention of US companies that “supermarkets across Europe, Canada, Japan, China, Brazil, South Africa, and throughout the world are using HFC-free refrigerant systems” as the alternatives are available [19].

Do we have refrigerants to meet all the regulations?

Refrigeration industry faces strict regulations regarding the use of the most fluorinated refrigerants. Of course, natural refrigerants are seen to be viable alternatives to high GWP synthetic refrigerants in many applications and can provide refrigeration and/or heating effect at different temperature levels. However, natural refrigerants are often flammable or toxic and not always suitable to be used. Among the synthetic alternatives, few single component low GWP refrigerants are well developed so far. Hence, we would probably need to rely on refrigerant mixtures for most of the applications.

Active development of refrigerant blends is ongoing and six chemical manufacturers provide a number of different refrigerant blends as alternatives to baseline R134a, R404A, R407C and R410A. For instance, significant progress has been reported on development of low GWP refrigerant blends for MAC systems. The blend of 3 refrigerants R445A (formerly known as AC6 and based on 85% R1234ze(E), 9% R134a and 6% CO₂) has been tested and shown similar performance to R-134a at high loads, somewhat less at low loads [20]. Further system performance development obviously is needed and, taking into account that the R445A is a combination of high-pressure refrigerant with the low-pressure refrigerants, this refrigerant, however, brings many questions to the discussion: how the temperature glide, leak detection and refrigerant charge problems will be addressed.

Out of the different fluorinated propene isomers (HFO), not only R1234yf is considered for the future. For example, production range of high performance free cooling chillers using the refrigerant R1234ze(E) has been announced recently [21]. Another HFO – R1234ze(Z) – is given attention as a potential refrigerant for high temperature heat pumps. One of the reasons that these F-gases have strong potential to be used in the future is that they are not defined as “fluorinated greenhouse gases” by the F-Gas Regulation proposal and thus are not subjects for placing on market prohibitions under the proposed regulation (but still needs to be reported regarding the quantities of their use).

This year shown to be as very active on developments in field of low GWP refrigerants. Next year will be not an exception. For instance, recently approved project on low-GWP alternatives promotion for the air conditioning industry in high ambient temperature countries will bring us topics for discussion [22]. Not mentioning that the drama around the MAC Directive and F-Gas regulation is not over yet.

Thank you for following us this year and we hope you will keep in touch during next year as well.

PS

Bibliography