Industrial Refrigeration

Ammonia is the Future

The Past

Ammonia has been an established, pre-eminent industrial refrigerant for over 125 years. Ammonia has been used in industrial refrigeration applications such as food production. CFCs, such as Freon, became popular in the 1930s due to their low toxicity. The chlorine in the refrigerant was found to have caused a hole in the ozone layer. Therefore, they have now been phased out. Non-chlorine, low toxicity, HFCs were developed to replace the CFCs. HFCs, however, have a high global warming potential, so they too are being phased down to 21% by 2030

The Future

Between now and 2030 ammonia will become increasingly popular in non-industrial applications, such as, the cooling of data centres and the air conditioning of buildings. Systems with a low refrigerant charge have been developed and rigorously field tested, so the application of cooling a small office with ammonia is becoming more and more common place. New ammonia chillers are simpler in design, therefore competitive in price to HFC chillers. The higher initial cost is paid back in electricity savings within 2 years- then they become cheaper. They use less electricity because ammonia has a latent heat bubble 5 times bigger than other refrigerants- more refrigeration effect and less gas. The range of smaller, non-industrial applications will spiral during the HFC phase down

Toxicity

There are no concerns, now-a-days, by the end user as regards the toxicity of the refrigerant. The refrigerant is contained within the system. Similar to electricity being contained within plastic in your home. The low charge refrigeration plant shuts down in the event of a leak. You can stand next to a leaking ammonia system and tolerate the gas. The machine brings a fan on which disperses the small amount of ammonia into air. The ammonia then absorbs into the moisture in the air. Particularly in North Europe and to an increasing extent in the UK, ammonia is used in domestic or residential locations