WILMINGTON, DE — DuPont Fluorochemicals announced that it has identified and is now testing new proprietary refrigerants that will meet the European Union (EU) requirements to reduce the global warming potential (GWP) of refrigerants in future automotive air conditioning systems.
The new refrigerants are expected to be compatible with conventional hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) 134a automotive air conditioning systems with the potential for only minor modifications. These new refrigerants are expected to be commercialized within three to five years, in time to meet the timeline set by the pending EU F-Gas regulation. The F-Gas requirements call for the phaseout of hydrofluorocarbon HFC-134a in all new vehicle models beginning in 2011, and in all new cars by 2017, and replacement with alternatives having GWPs lower than 150.
The new DuPont refrigerants, which are now undergoing performance, toxicity and safety testing, are expected to be non-flammable and have significantly lower GWP than current refrigerants. Unlike CO2, however, these newly developed refrigerants are expected to offer similar performance to HFC-134a and would not require a complete redesign of current automotive air conditioning systems. DuPont is currently working with key players in the industry to ensure that solutions under development will meet the needs of the industry.
“These new products will provide practical alternatives to experimental technologies such as CO2, which would require radical changes and the costly redesign of conventional automotive air conditioning systems,” said Mark Baunchalk, global business manager, DuPont Refrigerants. “We have tripled our research and development investment and put our science to work to find more sustainable refrigerant solutions, and we are confident in the progress achieved to date.”
DuPont led the transition away from chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants by introducing safer, non-ozone depleting HFCs in 1991. DuPont maintains that HFCs currently represent the best balance of performance, cost, safety and environmental properties for refrigeration and air conditioning, and actively supports HFC responsible use programs to ensure current refrigerants are used safely and responsibly and are reclaimed and recycled to minimize potential sources of refrigerant emissions. Through responsible use programs such as the Improved Mobile Air Conditioning (I-MAC) Cooperative Research Program, DuPont is working with stakeholders in industry to minimize the environmental impact of current automotive air conditioning systems by improving their energy efficiency and reducing refrigerant emissions.
Baunchalk added, “DuPont’s new refrigerant compounds may have the potential to be leveraged into more sustainable cooling solutions for other air conditioning and refrigeration applications, and we will be investigating that in the near future.”
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