Clean Refrigerants Needed for Long-term Solutions
The EcoThermics CO2 hydronic heat pump uses sequestered carbon dioxide as the refrigerant, is linearly scalable, modular, robust, energy efficient, small, quiet, and green.
Chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants (CFCs) were used as refrigerants for decades before the realization of their damaging effect on the Earth's ozone layer. After the 1989, Montreal Protocol banned their production and use ushering in a new crop of synthetic refrigerants known as fluorocarbons (FCs) which are now prevalent.
It is now scientifically undeniable that FC proprietary replacement chemical refrigerants have long duration damaging global warming effects on the atmosphere. The Kyoto Protocol and other “eco and/or geo” politics resulted in European Union regulations to phase out FCs by 2009 and the US Army decision to deploy R744 systems by 2010. This global awareness continues to exert ever increasing political pressures to discontinue the use of these products, notwithstanding scientific debate concerning what portion of global warming is due to these chemicals and other manmade environmental impacts.
Environmental concerns forced a fresh look at CO2 revealing new possibilities and significant advantages over the environmental, regulatory and economic liabilities of FCs or other chemical blends. Use of sequestered carbon dioxide as a refrigerant represents an ideal solution for cost-effective and long-term heating and cooling solutions that are environmentally friendly, because CO2 won’t be banned in the future or require expensive retrofits prior to the end of the system service life, do not require management of hazardous chemicals or become subject to strict import or export controls.
While thermodynamically and environmentally attractive, R744 based refrigerant systems were historically disfavored in lieu of mechanically simpler fluorocarbon (FC) systems despite the superior heat transfer properties of CO2. High system pressures and other physical properties required to efficiently utilize CO2 imposed significant technical obstacles, especially in regards to the compressor, and were without clear solutions - until now.
The replacement of FC refrigerants with natural atmospheric CO2 requires consideration of its unique physical properties. This presents some very difficult technological challenges due to its high-pressure environment, which may be four times higher than today’s systems. This is the causal root of the technical and manufacturing cost obstacles that must be overcome, and thus the applied science requires fundamental mechanical departure from convention. Notwithstanding these hurdles, EcoThermics technologies offer practical and manufacturable product answers.