HVACR is on the front line of
Earth-friendliness
Here’s a question: What do carbon dioxide, Albert Einstein and magnets have in common?
Answer: They’re all being put to use to help make the HVAC industry greener and more efficient.
On the surface, refrigeration technology may seem pretty straightforward. But when given a closer look, you’ll see that refrigeration technology is one of today’s most adaptable, Earth-friendly industries. As businesses and consumers alike try to reduce their contribution to global warming, HVAC professionals are doing their part, too.
Here are just a few of the techniques that are helping green refrigeration step into the spotlight:
- Carbon dioxide. Over the past several years, refrigerant choices have changed with the times. Many refrigerators first used chlorofluorocarbons (also known as CFCs) to keep things cool. But these ozone-depleting substances were then replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs have a lower global warming potential than CFCs, but are still a powerful greenhouse gas. Recently, scientists have discovered that the combination of a natural refrigerant – such as carbon dioxide (CO2) – and a fluid such as ammonia or propane can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 percent. Several European countries are already taking advantage of this refrigeration technique, and it can be a great option for superstore and grocery store refrigeration systems.
- Albert Einstein’s green refrigerator. Albert Einstein is certainly renowned for changing the world of physics with his theory of relativity, but it turns out he also dabbled in refrigeration. In 1930, Einstein and his former student Leo Szilard designed a refrigerator that required no electricity and had no moving parts. Now, Malcolm McCulloch, an electrical engineer at Oxford, is working on building a prototype of Einstein’s design. How does it work? Instead of compressing man-made greenhouse gases called Freons, as typical refrigerators do, this refrigerator uses pressurized gases to keep items cold. The refrigerator only requires a way to heat the liquids, and McCulloch has been working on a way to harness solar energy to make this happen.
- A green refrigerator that works with the power of magnets. You may not think magnets have any use related to refrigerators other than holding important (and not so important) papers to the front of the fridge, but their potential is much greater! Magnetic refrigeration systems could provide a green alternative to traditional gas-guzzling compression fridges and air conditioners. These systems would require 20-30 percent less energy to run than the best systems currently on the market. This magnetic refrigeration design works by applying a magnetic field to a magnetic material (metallic alloys, for instance), causing the material to heat up. Then, water is used to remove excess heat from the system and cools the material back to its original temperature. Finally, the magnetic field is removed and the material cools down even further. Scientists are still working out the kinks of this technology in the lab, but they expect it will make great strides in the refrigeration and green air conditioning industries in the coming years.
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