The industry in North America is working on a variety of solutions to deal with the 150g hydrocarbons (HCs) charge limit for plug-in refrigeration and to allow the efficiency gains of HC refrigerants to be realised in additional applications such as air conditioning. The North American industry predicts an exponential growth in HC products 2-3 years from now, although they say more action is needed to address public perception and insurance factors.

Industry representatives shared experiences on progress made with HC solutions with the 200 participants at the 2^nd annual ATMOsphere America 2013 conference held from 17-19 June 2013 in Washington DC. Event speakers and participants included end-users, component and system suppliers, associations, regulatory bodies, and NGOs, brought together by their shared interest in moving the market for natural refrigerants forward, and in building the “business case for natural refrigerants”, as the event tagline promised.

"HCs is the right choice for light commercial refrigeration"

The focus of the presentation by Sidnei Oliveira, Global Manager, R&D Computer Aided Engineering at Tecumseh Products Company, was on small bottle coolers, single-door merchandisers and small beer (keg) cooler appliances. The case study presented energy efficiency gains and improvements in pull-down time, achieved when replacing HFC134a with HC290 refrigerant for a beer cooler:

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