Page 24 - Climate Control News Magazine Feb 2019

Natural Refrigerants
New ammonia systems are more com
AMMONIA, KNOWN IN the industry as R717, makes up by far the largest portion of nat- ural refrigerants in the Australian bank.
The main applications where ammonia systems are found include cold storage fa- cilities (typically 5,000 to 1,000,000 m3), large chilling, blast freezing and ice making systems in the primary and secondary stag- es of the cold food chain, and some chemical processes and mining air conditioning ap- plications.
According to Cold Hard Facts 3 there is an es- timated 14.8 to 15.1 million m3 of cold storage space operating on ammonia systems. Assum- ing a benchmark obtained from industry sources of 29 kg per 1,000 m3 of storage space, this equates to around 430 to 450 tonnes of ammonia in cold stores.
Other applications where large charges of am- monia systems can be found in single installa- tions are in high volume blast freezing applica- tions that are extremely energy intensive, requiring snap freezing of large masses of perish- able goods such as in meat processing, poultry processing and other primary and secondary processes in the refrigerated cold food chain (i.e. vegetables, dairy, beverages, frozen foods).
Some individual meat processing facilities are known to contain up to 150 tonnes of ammonia, the report said. The bank is estimated to have only grown by around 100 tonnes per annum.
“Although this is considerably less than the annual volumes reported as sold, market intel- ligence suggests that a significant proportion of ammonia sold in the past few years is going into new systems installed at existing enter- prises, replacing old ammonia systems,” the report said. “What is more, the new systems have smaller refrigerant charges than the sys-
“THIS MARKET COULD EXPERIENCE RAPIDLY RISING DEMAND IN CAPACITIES BELOW 50 KW,”
– COLD HARD FACTS 3.
tems being replaced, contributing in part to the relatively slow growth of the bank, even while the service providers in this segment are report- ed to be operating at full capacity.
“The new ‘packaged’ designs are character- ised by smaller ammonia charges, reduced pip- ing, ease of maintenance and installation, and safer start-up routines, all of which help make low-charge ammonia packaged units appealing to end users and technicians.” Compared to the conventional older large charge ammo- nia designs, the modern, small charge am- monia plants are proving to be readily adaptable to a large range of applications and site layouts, with high degree of mobil- ity, the report said.
Most importantly from a business perspec- tive, the annual energy consumption of the new ammonia systems can be as little as one third of the older HFC/HCFC based systems. The capital cost of the new systems is also sub- stantially lower than traditional designs with the smaller ammonia plants now able to com- pete head-to-head with 100 kWr HFC-based systems, the report said.
Combined with the strong energy saving re- turns, small charge packaged ammonia systems –whether new plant or retrofitted – are able to pay for themselves within 3 to 6 years based on energy savings alone, the report found.
From a business planning perspective ammo- nia is also an attractive option because ammo- nia charged systems are essentially future
GLOBAL HFC PHASEDOWN
The Kigali Amendment is officially in force across the globe but there are still a long list of signatories that haven’t stepped up and officially ratified.
Out of the 197 Parties to the Montreal Protocol that voted for a global phasedown of HFCs in 2016, only 65 countries have officially ratified as of January 1, 2019.
This includes some of the biggest countries in the world, namely the United States and China.
This agreement is expected to reduce global warming up to 0.4°C by 2100, which will make a significant contribution to the Paris Agreement objective to limit the temperature rise well below 2°C.
proofed against the effect of HFC restrictions. In this particular segment of the industry it is generally acknowledged that the techni- cians available to handle ammonia refrigerant
systems are operating at capacity.
“While the relative simplicity and safety of
new ammonia designs does make it easier to train technicians, the trend to more com- pact, cheaper and safer systems also means that this market could experience rapidly rising demand in capacities below 50 kW, opening up a much wider range of applica- tions along the cold food chain. If this trend meets with a limited supply of qualified technicians, then industry constraints could limit an important opportunity for seg- ments of the cold food chain to move away from the use of HFCs in the decade ahead. The recent opening of a privately funded dedi- cated ammonia refrigeration training facility in Sydney is an important step towards overcom- ing the skills bottleneck,” the report said. ✺
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