The International Institute of All-Natural Refrigeration has released a “Refrigerant Evaluator Tool” to help IIAR members and others assess their refrigerant choices and evaluate their options as the Environmental Protection Agency phases out high global warming potential refrigerants.

The International Institute of All-Natural Refrigeration has released a “Refrigerant Evaluator Tool” to help IIAR members and others assess their refrigerant choices and evaluate their options as the Environmental Protection Agency phases out high global warming potential refrigerants.

“End users are facing new regulations that will limit their choices for refrigerants, and the refrigerants that they are familiar with may not be an available option for them anymore,” said John Flynn, the chair of the IIAR Education Committee, the committee responsible for the creation of the new tool. “The side-by-side evaluation tool can be a powerfully helpful tool for them as they compare refrigerant properties and characteristics to find the right choice for their operation.”

Refrigerant choices outside of the world of natural refrigerants have gotten more complex as a result of regulatory phaseouts, making IIAR’s newly released comparison tool a valuable resource for anyone trying to compare the performance and efficiency of different refrigerants.

“For us in the industrial refrigeration business, most of our customers use naturals, but some use synthetics and those customers will have to find new refrigerants,” Flynn said. “The purpose of this tool is for those people to find new refrigerants and to help them evaluate their options.”

End-users who aren’t familiar with natural refrigerants often have concerns over safety and regulatory costs. “Many of these have been mitigated through the work of this organization and its members,” Flynn said. “The concern or fear for these unknowns has largely been offset by the breadth of materials which IIAR has created for training, technical information, and design standards.”

Plus, non-natural refrigerants share flammability and safety ratings now, and the regulatory gap between natural and nonnatural refrigerants has largely closed.

IMPROVING DECISION MAKING

The tool allows anyone to look at a side-by-side comparison of natural and synthetic refrigerants and determine which refrigerants have the best qualities for any given installation. It provides a lot of factbased information to help end users and contractors quickly evaluate one refrigerant against another and includes information on natural refrigerants like ammonia, CO2, propane and other hydrocarbons alongside synthetic refrigerants.

“Having a tool that can start to direct you, even if it is just for certain applications, is brilliant. If nothing else, it starts the thought process,” said Tristam Coffin, co-founder and president of sustainability, policy, and technical services, êffecterra.

The tool is designed to not only enhance end users’ comparisons of refrigerants that they are choosing among but also allows them to compare those refrigerants to the refrigerant that they are already familiar with to give them context for the characteristics.

The tool displays refrigerant information across two screens. The first screen displays information for individual refrigerants, while the second screen allows a side-by-side comparison of up to three refrigerants. The format helps a facility owner make decisions like comparing safety system costs and installation costs or performing an evaluation of the full costs of installing and running a refrigeration system with a particular refrigerant.

Coffin said there are a lot of nuances between different refrigeration solutions. “When it comes to emerging technologies, there are a lot of considerations,” he said. “There is a paradigm/infrastructure shift that you have to take into account.”

For example, in some applications, a HFC system can be replaced with a CO2 system. “It is effectively like for like,” Coffin said. “I think, in that regard, that is why you’ve seen the refrigeration industry make significant strides as compared to the HVAC industry, where those like-for-like applications are much less common.”

HIGHLIGHTING CRITICAL DIFFERENCES

A lot of the things those in the world of natural refrigerants are accustomed to, such as ventilation, safety and venting, are things that prior synthetics did not have as concerns when they were classified as A1 refrigerants. To get below the EPA-mandated 150 GWP limit, synthetic refrigerant blends now carry an A2L classification, which puts them in the same B2L flammability category as ammonia because of their similar flammability characteristics.

That means that “if you’re using new synthetics, you have to adhere to the safety code requirements such as ventilation and refrigerant detection that are similar to the requirements that ammonia has always had,” Flynn explained.

Part of the purpose and beauty of the tool is that it helps anyone who is not familiar with these requirements take them into account as they compare all the different factors that go into making a refrigerant decision. “The information the tool displays is built upon a database of information that is readily available but not all in one place, so this tool helps owners find all that information in one place,” Flynn said.

The tool’s information sources include the standards ASHRAE 15 and ASHRAE 34, different chapters of the ASHRAE Handbook, information from the U.S. EPA, NIST and other sources that are outlined in a fact sheet that accompanies the tool.

“With the focus on our climate and the impact refrigerants can have, this is an important time for facility owners to recognize that leaks from their systems can harm the environment,” Flynn said. “Because of the steps the EPA is taking to manage releases, a time of change is coming. This tool gives everyone the information needed to help navigate that time of change and make the most informed decisions.”

UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES WITH SYNTHETICS

HFOs have been chemically engineered to lower the global warming potential of refrigerants using HFO components in anticipation of these climate-related regulations. “The lower GWP comes with an unfortunate cost, though, and that is flammability,” Flynn said.

Most of the new refrigerants are blends of HFOs to lower GWP and HFCs to lower flammability. “However, an unanticipated consequence of HFOs is that they readily degrade into TFAs and other PFAS chemicals in the atmosphere, usually within just a few weeks of release,” Flynn explained, adding that the result is these chemicals are absorbed into precipitation and contaminate our water supplies.

“One thing that we know is that on a level playing field, natural refrigerants compare favorably to other refrigerants in most applications,” Flynn said. “As the regulations for safety on A2L refrigerants are shown to be similar to the requirements for ammonia, end users are more likely to base their decisions on efficiency comparisons which often favor natural refrigerants.”

Owners being forced to change refrigerants because of new environmental regulatory factors may increase the weight of the likelihood of future regulations to avoid the painful process in the future in their decision-making process. Natural refrigerants are often referred to as futureproof refrigerants specifically because the probability of these refrigerants being banned or curtailed is so minuscule. For those considering which refrigerants to use, Flynn recommends they undertake a thorough analysis and consider safety, regulatory as well as energy efficiency and other operating costs of the refrigerant. “Once all the facts are understood, the choice is usually a straightforward one,” he said.

IIAR’s Education Committee task force responsible for developing the refrigerant evaluator tool was led by Jose Mergolhoa and includes Caden Matson, Josh Isely, Wayne Borrowman, Chris Savage and Flynn as well as IIAR staff members Tony Lundell and Eric Smith.

The IIAR Refrigerant Evaluator Tool can be found at: https://refrigerantcomparison. com/