To the natural refrigerants of HCs, CO2, and ammonia, there has been added what is being called a fourth platform. Water is now being promoted in the international community with the launch of a website called www.R718.com.
A hot topic in the world of refrigeration and air conditioning continues to swirl around refrigerants and what refrigerants will take hold and be used now, besides HFCs, and what will supplant HFCs in the future.
Parker Hannifin has announced what it described as “new real-world testing capabilities” with the launch of Sporlan Supermarket Test Lab in Washington, Mo. It is said to “mimic a wide spectrum of real life supermarket operations.”
The concurrent 21st International Compressor Engineering Conference, 14th International Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Conference, and 2nd International High Performance Buildings Conference showed how dramatically the issue of global warming is impacting the refrigerant aspect of the HVACR industry and how complex the issue is.
As the supermarket industry continues to embrace so-called ‘natural refrigerants,’ manufacturers also continue to seek improvements in energy efficiency with what they hope is easy to use equipment for service technicians. The FMI Food Retail Show was a major showcase for these developments at this year’s show in Dallas.
Many service technicians believe that frost on a suction line or on the compressor’s head itself indicates there is liquid refrigerant coming back to the compressor. Is this really true?
When it comes to industrial and commercial refrigeration, high on the research radar screen are low GWP alternative refrigerants for everything from small bottle coolers and freezers to entire supermarket systems.
When the EPA’s Greenchill’s Keilly Witman spoke at the Food Marketing Institute Expo last spring she said so-called natural refrigerants would dominate the conversation and begin to appear in supermarkets in North America. Was she right?
HVACR contractors who replace TXV valves during servicing are always seeking ways to carry the variety of valves they need in their vans or trucks. One new approach comes from Danfoss with its Maximizer and Minimizer kits, which package multiple TXV combinations in one place.