An “Energy Efficiency Summit” held in Bangkok, Thailand on 12-13 July aiming to address the best practices in achieving energy savings and reducing operating costs while contributing to the environment, included a presentation on how to achieve energy savings with natural refrigerants such as hydrocarbons, and on the development of a Thai hydrocarbons production facility.
Organised within the context of a projected increase in energy demand of 53% and global carbon emissions increase of 55%, the Energy Efficiency Summit brought together 80 speakers to discuss topics related to improving energy efficiency in building, industrial processes and transportation.
Green Cooling Association presentation on energy saving with hydrocarbons
Among the speakers was Green Cooling Association Executive Director Brent Hoare, who delivered a presentation titled “Keeping cool and saving cash – Reducing electricity bills and emissions with natural refrigerants” to showcase examples from around the world of the use of hydrocarbon refrigerants to achieve energy savings.
The Green Cooling Association presentation covered the following topics:
- Opportunities to reduce electricity consumption through retrofit of existing air conditioning systems with hydrocarbon refrigerants – experience in South East Asia and the Caribbean
- Emerging high efficiency hydrocarbon air conditioning systems in China and Australia
- Low charge ammonia commercial air conditioning systems – examples of 50% power savings compared to conventional HFC systems
- Energy efficiency opportunities from absorption air conditioning systems utilising waste heat
- Energy efficiency opportunities from the use of natural refrigerants in commercial and industrial refrigeration
Current developments: Pure hydrocarbon facility in Thailand by Asian Green Fluids Co., Ltd.
“Use of hydrocarbon refrigerants in retrofitting existing HCFC R22 air conditioning systems has been widely demonstrated to achieve energy savings of 10-25% in many applications around the world, and is becoming increasingly popular in South East Asia”, said Mr Hoare.
According to Mr Hoare, “Stiff competition will be faced from those attempting to promote HFC R32 as a “climate friendly” alternative, but with a 100 year GWP (Global Warming Potential) of 650 and a 20 year GWP of 2,330, these claims are clearly false, deceptive and misleading, and severely undermine the competitive advantage of genuinely climate and environmentally friendly refrigerants such as hydrocarbons and ammonia in air conditioning systems.”
Centre for Energy Environment Research and Development (CEERD Co., Ltd.) – Asian Green Fluids project
Professor Thierry Lefevre, CEERD Director and one of the members of the conference Advisory Committee said CEERD was proud to endorse the conference to promote the need to achieve energy efficiency gains generally, and more specifically to promote awareness of the role hydrocarbons can play.
“We anticipate a large increase in demand for hydrocarbon refrigerants in coming years, and expect the increased use in existing systems will make a major contribution to reducing electricity use in several sectors, and to achieving the accelerated phase out of ozone depleting and powerful global warming gas HCFC R22. The Asian Green Fluids project being developed by CEERD Co., Ltd. is currently in the fund raising phase and looking for strategic and environmentally concerned partners. The plant is planned to be in full production by early 2013,” said Professor Lefevre.
The CEERD is now calling on those developing and approving HCFC Phase-out Management Plans (HPMPs) around the world to closely evaluate the strong contribution hydrocarbons are able to make to achieving the objectives of the Montreal Protocol while at the same time protecting the climate by avoiding further dependence on HFCs in developing countries.
