4 ms·
Yeah, natural refrigerants are the way - CO2, hydrocarbon gases, ammonia (in industrial settings), water/steam, and air - these can pretty much cover the entire
by semi-extrinsic 4y ago
Yeah, natural refrigerants are the way - CO2, hydrocarbon gases, ammonia (in industrial settings), water/steam, and air - these can pretty much cover the entire temperature range that you will ever need in heat pumps.
The natural refrigerants are indeed becoming increasingly popular. Essentially all new supermarket refrigeration systems in Europe are CO2-based nowadays, as an example. And almost all domestic fridges are using isobutane, freezers are using isopentane.
Unfortunately there is a large push behind synthetic refrigerants, because there is a large industry who makes money off selling these compounds and would like to keep it that way.
- whatshisface 4y agoDo refrigeration engineers really fall prey to "big pushes" when everything they need to know about a gas is represented in those charts they use?
- serf 4y agokick-backs that produce inter-corporate relationships are vast and numerous. if X engineer is treated to a real nice dinner and game tickets by Company Y representative , very few charts will sway their opinion. tl;dr : most corporate products are not shaped purely by economic and efficiency metrics.
- whatshisface 4y agoYeah, both companies can easily do that, it doesn't change the balance.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThat is corruption.
- semi-extrinsic 4y agoIn general you need to build the whole heat pump (incl. compressor) for the specific refrigerant and application you have in mind. So if you have an existing line of products using synthetic refrigerants, and a dozen factories around the world making those, you might very well choose to listen to a manufacturer of synthetic refrigerants pushing a new fancy one, rather than decide you need to re-engineer all your products for natural working fluids.