R32 refrigerant – why the change and why now?

Carl Dickinson looks at the background to the use of a new refrigerant in air conditioning units.

If you work with air conditioning in any way, whether as a consultant, installer, service engineer or corporate user of heat pump equipment, you may have heard about the move to a new refrigerant known as R32.

You may also be aware that the industry has changed refrigerants before and you may wonder to yourself ‘why the new change? And why now?’

Manufacturers such as Mitsubishi Electric strive to develop the most efficient technology available, using the materials available at the time.

Up until about 1994, this is what led to the use of R22 refrigerant, which was the refrigerant of choice throughout the air conditioning industry.

R22 is a Hydrochlorofluorocarbon, or HCFC and unfortunately, releases of HCFCs are proven to deplete the Earth’s protective ozone layer and contribute to climate change. This is why R22 has now been banned in Europe in all forms and refrigerants were introduced that did not contain ozone-depleting chlorine.

R22 was completely phased out at the beginning of 2015 under the Montreal Protocol and we are already seeing the ozone layer repairing itself with current predictions that it will have fully repaired by around 2050.

Continue reading R32 refrigerant – why the change and why now? at SPECIFIER REVIEW.

source https://specifierreview.com/2019/01/25/r32-refrigerant-air-conditioning/