Why choose CO₂ for your cooling?

Choosing CO₂ as your cooling agent has been described as “Economically sound and environmentally brilliant” when compared to HFCs and glycol-based systems.

Environmentally Friendly

Reduce your carbon footprint by using a gas with negligable impact on the environment compared to conventional choices.

Cost Savings

Higher efficiency means less power is required, and therefore lower running costs which can be up to 20% less than traditional cooling systems.

Compact Plant

CO₂’s lower viscosity means smaller piping, evaporators & pumps and therefore a more compact plant footprint.

Futureproof your plant

Governments are increasingly taking action to reduce the use of HFCs so choosing CO₂ will safeguard your plant from any future restrictions.

Reliable Technology

CO₂ is well established as an efficient cooling agent, with superior thermophysical properties and volumetric performance.

Reduced Maintenance

Less complexity compared to other natural refrigerants such as NH₃ (Ammonia) make this easy to install and maintain.

The natural choice

While CO₂ has always been an attractive choice as a refrigerant, advances in terms of transcritical system technology have meant that the historic challenges dealing with high pressures have been overcome and CO₂ cooling installations are no longer more costly to install. Standard 120 bar and 52 bar components are now available which makes CO₂ a cost-efficient choice for refrigeration systems.

When it comes to replacing HFCs and Glycol based systems in the industrial refrigeration plants, CO₂ is proving to be a natural choice – literally!

Above: CO2 Cooling Installation

Reduced operating costs

CO₂ is less costly both to operate and to service when compared with the more traditional ammonia and secondary glycol systems. Combine this with the benefits of smaller pipe dimensions and a reduced overall footprint, thanks to CO₂’s notably lower viscosity throughout the temperature range, and there are potential savings to be had both on the installation and in the overall complexity of a CO₂ based cooling system.

CO₂’s high heat transfer efficiency coefficient means a significant reduction in energy consumption because you can operate with a much lower temperature difference in evaporators and heat exchangers. Even in cases where a more complex refrigeration system might prompt higher installation costs, this is soon recovered through the significantly lower energy costs.

CO₂ has superior thermophysical properties, is non-toxic, non-flammable and non-corrosive and its volumetric performance is up to 12 times better than NH₃.

Above: CO2 Cooling Pack

Futureproof your plant

CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, but studies have illustrated that the impact on global warming by HFCs is 6000 times higher than CO₂.

Governments are increasingly taking action to reduce the use of HFCs so choosing CO₂ will safeguard your plant from any future restrictions.

Above: CO2 Cooling Pack cabinets & monitoring

Reduced carbon footprint

Using CO₂ as your cooling agent will not only reduce your carbon footprint through the use of a gas with negligible impact on the environment compared to conventional gases, in addition to using less energy and being a lot less toxic than that of ammonia.

CO₂ has a very low GWP (global warming potential) value of 1 as opposed to the current refrigerant typically used such as R404A having a GWP equal to 3800.

With tighter legislation coming into force regarding choice of refrigeration gases, HFC R404A has already been taken out of circulation by 2020, and a short term measure is allowing recovered R404 and other similarly high GWP gases to be used only until 1st January 2030, if that “regenerated” gas has been recycled or reclaimed from the same type of system. Choosing CO₂ will future proof your investment.