Why CO2?
Earth Friendly = Budget Friendly
“There is a very strong potential to utilize CO2 in heating applications. One of the strengths of CO2 is that it can achieve fairly high temperatures, such that you cannot typically achieve with most of our conventional refrigerants. Any place that has a fairly constant demand for hot water is an excellent application for a CO2 HVAC system.”
Travis Horton,
Ph.D.
Assistant Professor - Civil Engineering Purdue University,
EcoThermics CTO
The primary challenge facing industry today is development of heating and cooling systems that manage and conserve energy more efficiently, while utilizing environmentally benign natural refrigerants. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an ideal choice.
The same gas that puts the fizz in soda pop and fills fire extinguishers is also a highly efficient refrigerant. The higher operating pressures and widely-recognized superior thermal characteristics of CO2 present opportunities for exceptional operating efficiencies, producing higher temperatures from heat pumps, even at extremely low temperatures, and faster “cool-down” from heat soaked environments. Because carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring atmospheric gas obtained as a by-product of industrial production, it is not created; therefore, its use has a net zero environmental impact. Used extensively today in numerous applications, CO2 is widely available, inexpensive, non-toxic, non-flammable, and in many ways, the ideal gas for next generation vapor compression heat pumping equipment.
Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants in prolific use today are toxic gasses produced in chemical plants and have a global warming impact up to several thousand times greater than carbon dioxide (which has a baseline global warming potential = 1). Adding to the high purchased cost of synthetic refrigerants is the massive logistical infrastructure, mandated by regulation, to reclaim, recycle, inventory, and handle regulated compounds. Once can see why, with increasing energy costs and environmental concerns, research and development of products that use natural refrigerants accelerated in the 1990s.
The emergence of environmentally friendly, naturally occurring compounds as refrigerants of choice, and the corresponding decline of toxic synthetic refrigerants that have dominated the industry for 80 years, is arguably the most important technological shift the HVACR industry has experienced. There is ample evidence that this shift is underway and poised to quickly change the landscape of the industry, particularly in the heat pump markets.