06 Use Of Natural Refrigerants In Turkey Kadir Isa

Dr Kadir iSAIstanbul University Faculty of Engineering

Mechanical Engineering Department

Joint meeting of the Regional Ozone Networks for Europe & Central Asia and South Asia

İstanbul, 26 - 30 April 2010

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there”

“Learning is like rowing upstream, not to advance is to drop back”

“If we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.”

Much of the refrigeration and air conditioning equipment in Turkey uses CFC and HCFC refrigerants to facilitate the heat transfer process.

Alternatives to these chemicals exist that can help to mitigate some of the environmental risks. Often referred to as ‘natural’ refrigerants because the substances also occur in nature, these alternatives include ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons.

These substances have been used as refrigerants for many years, however, they are now finding their way into applications where previously fluorocarbons were the preferred option.

This presentation includes an overview on how they’ve been put to use in Turkey, and pointers to some sources of further information.

It appears that the key to success in the use of hydrocarbons is to use them in fully sealed systems of relatively low charge. The greatest success of hydrocarbons has been in the application of R600a to domestic refrigerators.

Many refrigerators have been produced in Turkey and I am not aware of a single accident due to the flammability of R600a. Domestic refrigerators using isobutane are at least as safe as domestic refrigerators using halocarbons and they are more efficient and less noisy.

Propane (R290) offers direct benefits regarding two problems:

It has no direct contribution to global warming and its energy consumption is between 12 to 15% lower than a similar application with R404A.

Propane has better dynamic behaviour showing a lower increase of energy consumption with increasing ambient temperatures.

World’s 7th home appliance manufacturer and Turkey’s biggest household refrigerator producer, ARÇELİK, started to use R600a for domestic and international market. Almost 95% of its refrigerators using R600a and having A++ energy rating have been exported through EU countries. It has also started to produce R410A air conditioners as HCFC-22 replacement.

VESTEL Inc. also uses R600a for household refrigerator production.

UĞUR Refrigeration Inc. in Turkey which has been specialized in super low energy chest freezers use R600a as a refrigerant and have A++ rating.

When ammonia systems are designed, installed, operated and maintained in accordance with national safety standards and codes of practice, they do not present an unacceptable degree of risk.

Ammonia has been widely used in Turkey especially in commercial refrigeration systems. Several large ammonia absorption systems have been installed in recent years.

The reason for poor efficiencies obtained when using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant is that it has a low critical temperature. However, it seems that carbon dioxide has returned to the field of refrigeration.

CO2 is in the process of becoming a mainstream refrigerant in food retail applications. Because of efficiency gains it has the potential of becoming cost competitive even in absence of incentives.

Carrefour Turkey uses CO2 for its supermarket refrigeration systems. Carrefour has yet to choose its refrigeration strategy for the future. It focuses on going for the long-term solution – natural refrigerants – and not be conned into short-term fixes (HFOs–hydrofluoroolefins, eg. HFO 1234yf ) that not only pose serious environmental and health risks but are not economically viable.

TESCO, outside the UK, it has stores and/or trials planned with CO2 refrigeration systems in Korea, Thailand, Hungary, the USA, Turkey and Malaysia.

It has taken important steps to reduce HFC leakage - from 19% in 2006, to 14% in 2008.

Metro currently (as of January 2010) has no plans to expand the number of its stores using CO2 refrigeration systems, and as a result has no plans to go HFC-free.

Coca-Cola recently committed to going HFC-free in all its new vending machines and coolers by 2015. The company is committing to use its scale to aggregate demand and encourage supply as a means of accelerating the transition to HFC-free equipment.

PepsiCo is the first global corporation to establish a schedule to go HFC-free across a whole country. From 2009, all new coolers in Turkey will be HFC-free, and old coolers will be gradually taken off the market.

Dr. Kadir iSAAssistant Professor

Istanbul UniversityFaculty of Engineering

Mechanical Engineering DepartmentAvcilar Campus 34320 Istanbul – TR

T: +90212-473-7070F: +90212-473-7180E: [email protected]