Lower environmental impact with alternative refrigerants and flexible cooling
Our new refrigerants allow you to work towards a better environment, especially when they’re used in combination with energy-efficient flexible cooling that uses outside air.
In our previous newsletter, we explained that refrigerants are becoming more and more expensive due to European regulations. This concerns agents with a major impact on global warming, i.e. a high Global Warming Potential (GWP). To meet the fast-changing rules, we have two alternative refrigerants in our range: R513A and HFO-1234ze.
Opt for a refrigerant with less environmental impact
The R513A refrigerant has practically the same properties as R134A but is considerably less environmentally harmful. The GWP value of R134A is 1430, whereas that of R513A is 631.
With a GPW value of 1, the impact of HFO-1234ze is far less. This agent is suitable for projects in which machines must meet specific sustainability requirements, such as a certain number of BREEAM credits.
Use less refrigerant
The type of refrigerant you use is not the only factor that determines environmental impact. For example, we can see a trend developing from decentralised DX systems to central solutions with, for example, a water-cooling machine or heat pump, which use less coolant. An added advantage of central systems is that they allow for more efficient flexible cooling, using outside air, thereby consuming less energy. This is an attractive prospect for data centres, since cooling systems account for a large part of their total energy consumption.
Save energy with flexible cooling
Flexible cooling saves energy because the system uses outside air, which is colder. The higher the permitted temperature in the cooled room, the more effective flexible cooling will be, saving increasingly more energy. In many cases, flexible cooling is sufficient for large parts of the year, as supplementary mechanical cooling will only be necessary on hot summer days. In those instances, the compressors in the outdoor cooling machines will switch on automatically.
Combine flexible cooling with alternative refrigerants
We can implement energy-efficient flexible cooling systems with both types of low-GWP refrigerants. R513A can even be integrate into our cooling machines. Combining flexible cooling with HFO-1234ze requires a separate dry cooler, but this set-up does allow for a larger cooler, so that flexible cooling can be used even more often.