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Editor's Note: CR4 would like to thank Larry Butz - President, GEA Consulting for contributing this blog entry.
 In our ongoing series titled Making a Successful Transition to New Refrigerants we have been addressing many of the issues in this increasingly complex issue. We even revisited the concept of the Perfect Refrigerant which GEA's Ed Keuper puts in perspective.
 Never has the HVAC/R industry been further from this endpoint than right now. This was obvious to those who participated in November 2nd's webinar titled Refrigerant Evaluation and Selection hosted by The NEWS. Featured speaker, Rajan Rajendran, Engineering Director, Emerson Climate Technologies provided a closing observation that "Future refrigerants may differ by application and region, more than today's" echoing an opinion from this blog that "dial-a-blend" was not an unlikely scenario.
It would appear that (certain) HFCs, HFOs, Hydrocarbons, Carbon Dioxide and an array of combinations of these will find their own particular areas of optimization and application as a result of unique application requirements (industrial, commercial, residential, supermarket, mobile), regional climate, national regulations, type and cost of electricity, safety standards, cost, etc. There may be no Perfect Refrigerant but it appears there may be an array of Perfect Refrigerants.
 At this time it appears a "sweet spot" is emerging in the area of fluids/mixtures in the range of 500 to 700 GWP. Here the tradeoff betweeen efficiency and GWP places appropriate emphasis on efficiency. This would appear a good choice for many applications. However, countries and regions such as the EU may prevent use with existing mandates of GWP < 150.
If the subject of "Refrigerants" is of importance to your business I encourage you to find an hour to watch and listen to Raj's excellent presentation and the discussion from this webinar (Full Presentation). You might also want to download the slide presentation itself (Refrigerants Slide Presentation) and digest in more detail the wealth of information in it.
I applaud and thank Rajan, Emerson and The NEWS for this highly informative presentation.
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