About the author Dennis Beekman:

38 years with Trane as centrifugal and screw consultant, large chiller technology and product development, lead hermetic motor design engineer and design of electrical and mechanical for centrifugal and screw type compressors

On January 26, 2015, Trane Commercial Air-Conditioning announced it will offer the new Sintesis air-cooled chiller, which will use R513a as a refrigerant.

R513a

R513a is a new product for DuPont, who is marketing the azeotropic blend of HFC-134a (44%) and HFO-1234yf (56%) as Opteon® XP10. According to DuPont, XP10 is classified as an A1 refrigerant, meaning it has low toxicity at air concentrations lower than 400 ppm and does not show flame propagation in air at room conditions. This is the same rating as R134a and R-410a.

GWP Reduction

The GWP for R513a is stated by DuPont to be 631, which is down from 1300 for pure R134a, reducing it roughly by the fraction of pure R134a. The dilution of the R134a has reduced the flammability from the mildly flammable A2L rating of HFO-1234yf. It has also increased the GWP rating from HFO-1234yf, which is 4.

The other problem with HFO-1234yf is it appears to have an inherent cycle disadvantage of about 5% with say R-410a.

Flammability It looks like the A2L's are having trouble gaining acceptance due to the risks involved with their flammability and cooler heads are proposing a compromise GWP of around 600 or so with no flammability.

Note

This strategy is consistent with the recent announcement by Trane that their centrifugal chillers will be available using low GWP, A1 safety, high-efficiency R-1233zd for their line of centrifugal chillers.

Related Topics:

U.S. EPA Moves to Phase-out Familiar HFCs

Refrigerants Update: Clarity or Confusion?

Editor's Note: CR4 would like to thank Dennis Beekman, GEA Consulting Associate, for this blog, which originally appeared in the GEA blog entry entitled "Manufacturing Cost Competitiveness is Changing Worldwide".