How Dare You Continue to Apply F-gases!

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Armin Hafner, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway

From now on, end-users should insist that new refrigeration and heat-pump systems must be future proof. They should neither risk facing legal operation restrictions, nor the event that their units become ‘scrap assets’ before reaching their technical end of life. If this occurs, and it turns out that the cooling technology sold as ‘green’ was based only on a narrow-minded focus on the Global Warming Potential of the refrigerant, the end-user will have every right to blame the vendor for cheating.

By 2023, we should all know better and since alternative technology is available, continuing to use non-natural working fluids is quickly becoming a reputation issue for manufacturers and vendors. It is not good enough to carry on with business as usual and postpone the implementation of new systems with natural working fluids by claiming that the F-gas solution is still a legal option. The newly published content of the PFAS restriction proposal by the European Chemical Agency ECHA is crystal clear:
F-gases that decompose to PFAS are a risk to the environment and human health. Changes in standards, rules and regulations take years to come into effect, as shown in the case of FDA against the chemical giants. Therefore, every installation should require the vendor to supply thorough information to the end-user regarding the environmental impact of the F-gases used in their assets, and must confirm that they are taking responsibility for:

• Green House Gas (GHG) emissions related to the entire manufacturing process of the F-gases, a value that for R.1234yf can reach several hundreds of CO2-equivalents per kilogram of refrigerant.
• HFCs and especially unsaturated HFCs, which are decomposing in our atmosphere to trifluoroacetate (TFA), a salt of trifluoroacetic acid, in water and on the ground. TFA is very stable in water and dangerous to some aquatic organisms. It cannot be removed with the purification processes used in today’s drinking water treatment.
• PFAS – Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, also known as Forever Chemicals, a large family of over 9,000 highly persistent chemicals that do not occur in nature but are produced by decomposing HFCs.
• Green House Gas emissions that are related to these decomposition products. As an example, when R-1234ze decomposes due to common UV at sea level, there is a significant risk that harmful R-23 is part of the decomposition products. R-23 has a GWP value of up to 15,500!

Since there are currently no legal restrictions on end-users implementing F-gas based units, a financial deposit like that currently implemented in Norway for substances in relation to their greenhouse gas emissions (2023: 952 NOK / 1000 kg CO2) should be implemented in order to fund clean-up operations in the future.

Natural working fluids for refrigeration and heat-pumping systems have no hidden or secret environmental impact. The long-term operation of these systems can be guaranteed, as well as reduced energy demands when applied in accordance with design guidelines. All temperature levels and most applications can be cooled or heated by applying natural refrigerants. No single refrigerant can cover all applications, but the group of natural refrigerants can be used in all the applications that can be covered by fluorinated hydrocarbons and even more. Fluorinated hydrocarbons can neither go as low in temperature nor as high as the natural refrigerants; they only work in the medium temperature range in the most profitable markets.