ASHRAE - Refrigerants
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 1:47PM
All CFC (R11 and R12) and HCFC (notably R22 and R123) are being phased out by the Montreal Protocol that many nations have adopted as law. The phase out does not mean that they will disappear completely as enough gets produced by the allowed levels in the protocol for equipment service. The phase out has several consequences, mainly, the sharp increase in the cost of refrigerant that are no longer mainstream (such as R22 for whom no equipment will be manufactured after 2010). This increase should be accounted in the operational budget in the facilities that use them. R123 (used mainly in centrifugal chillers) will be not be phased out until 2020 and then, with the stocks that will be allowed to exist for maintenance, should be available until the machine that uses it becomes obsolete. The future refrigerants will be geared towards environmental friendliness. However, these new refrigerants will have a negative impact in HVAC equipment efficiency. This impact is expected to be offset partially by improvement in design and manufacturing technology of the equipment itself. If was recommended by the presenter that when requesting bids for centrifugal chillers going forward, that in addition of requesting a price for a baseline spec unit that all competitive manufacturer can provide, that a bid alternate be requested from the specific manufacturers’ most verifiably efficient machine in the design capacity. The premium cost over the base bid unit will most likely offer an attractive payback as well as an extension of the useful life of the equipment before it becomes obsolete from an efficiency standpoint.
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