Natural Hydrocarbon Refrigerants Case Study

Airconstruct have recently acquired an Actron 16 kilowatt ESP vertical Packaged unit to enter into a hydrocarbon case study of our own. We will be using our climacheck system to verify the compressor efficiency and publishing the results.

This case study involves the complete installation of this unit and controls as a secondary system to our company headquarters. This project will run for 12 months in various stages and the results will be published on our website and LinkedIn page.

While the capital outlay at first glance may not appear to be accountant friendly there are some long term advantages of converting to a hydrocarbon based system that can be best described as follows.

• The available data indicates we can reduce the running cost of your equipment by somewhere between 10-30% due to the reduced workload on the compressors and the system only containing roughly one third of the charge required of conventional refrigerants.
• Any ongoing replacement costs of refrigerant are substantially reduced from the current $250.00 per kilo and rising, to under $100.00 per kilo capped. The labour component of on-site works is reduced when opening systems up for repairs as hydrocarbons can be vented to atmosphere without compromising the environment.
• Hydrocarbon refrigerants have zero ozone depleting potential, as do most modern refrigerants, but with a significantly low global warming potential of 3, when compared to the global warming potential of 407C at 1370 GWP and with an atmospheric lifetime of under one year compared to 407C at 16 years.
• Hydrocarbon refrigerants are almost in an azeotropic state allowing for systems to be topped without having to pump-down and install fresh weighed critical charges.
• We are industry leaders in our approach and we have the data acquisition equipment coupled with the specialist training to validate the results of any retrofit project undertaken.