Full-phase ahead

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Mike Thompson, environmental affairs director at Trane in the US, talks to MEP Middle East about air-conditioning and the implications of the US refrigerant phase-out for the Middle East.

With the global air-con industry focusing on resource optimisation and energy efficiency at present, especially in the UAE, being environmental affairs director at a major player like Trane must be a ‘hot-seat’ position. Thompson laughs good-naturedly at the suggestion. “Environmental issues are nothing new,” he points out. “It started with the discovery that the fluorocarbons were one of the main causes of ozone depletion in the 1970s, and of course the Montreal Protocol in the 1980s. It has gone through many facets, and I think we are being far more responsible about it today than we have ever been.”

He says public perception plays a major role in the issues of the day. “However, public perception and reality are quite divergent. In the air-con industry, people think that using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant is a really good thing, as it means getting rid of these terrible fluorocarbons – but the reality is that fluorocarbons have been of tremendous benefit to the industry. If used responsibly, they can have a very minimal impact on the environment. You always have to be careful of the unintended consequences of moving to different chemicals. That is really the big thing: the long-term impact,” says Thompson.

Refrigerant of the future

“You have many touting carbon dioxide as the refrigerant of the future, but it is certainly not useful for all applications. On our equipment, you would consume about twice the amount of energy to get the same tonnage of cooling than you would with fluorocarbons, and so the side-effect of that would be devastating.” Thompson adds that the chemicals available today have a much smaller environmental impact than the chemicals used 20 to 30 years ago. “Our goal is to never leak any refrigerant. If it stays contained inside the machine, it will never have an opportunity to damage the environment.”

If the refrigerant issue is removed from the equation, then the air-con industry’s biggest impact on the environment today is through energy consumption. “There is no more energy-efficient way to cool a building than using fluorocarbon refrigerants,” argues Thompson. “Thus we need the public and also the legislators to look at all the aspects – the global warming impact, the ozone depletion potential and the energy efficiency. We need to find the best balanced approach in order to have a minimal impact on the environment. Sometimes people get very emotional about one facet of that, and completely ignore the other aspects. Most equipment manufacturers design around current criteria. But you have to understand the implications – cost is extremely important. Therefore the best-cost, highest-efficiency products today use fluorocarbons. That is the refrigerant of choice.”

Trends down the line

What other factors have to be taken into account with such an important choice? “It takes several years to design a new product or to use a new refrigerant, because of the different compressors and the characteristics of the chemicals and so forth.

“The industry sees trends down the line, and the manufacturers need to know what is going on several years ahead. It is a little bit nerve-wracking, because it costs millions of investment dollars. Therefore we need to make good solid decisions that do not change every couple of years,” says Thompson.

But is there such a thing as a ‘perfect refrigerant’ that the industry is striving for? Thompson’s emphatic answer is no. “In the 1980s we phased out CFCs, the major ozone-depleting substances. They were replaced by HCFCs, which had a much lower impact on the ozone layer. Then you have HFCs, which have zero ozone-depletion potential, but in many cases they are contributors to global warming.

“The Montreal Protocol, the international treaty dealing with ozone depletion, addresses these substances, but now legislation stemming from the Kyoto Protocol is addressing global-warming chemicals, and one of those six categories of chemicals is HFCs. So we are seeing a tremendous pressure in the industry right now to move to a new generation of chemicals with a very low contribution to global warming. We do not know what these new chemicals will be.

“In the US, we are phasing out R22 at the end of this year for use in new equipment. In the Middle East, it is not quite that quick, as you have 20 more years before you really have to phase out that particular refrigerant.

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