International. A Japanese refrigerant specialist announced the development of the new HFO-1123 blend, a low-GWP refrigerant that is expected to be the next-generation standard for air conditioners; a work carried out in cooperation with the University of Tokyo.
Manufactured by the company AGC, this would be the first refrigerant in the world with GWP less than 10 for air conditioners, which has entered the final stage.
The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol has mandated a significant reduction in the production and consumption of HFCs. In particular, refrigerants used in air conditioners for homes and stores account for the largest share of the global market, making the development of refrigerants with low GWP an urgent problem.
To solve this problem, AGC's hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) AMOLEA™1123 is expected to be a candidate to reduce HFCs. AMOLEA™ 1123 is an HFO developed by AGC in 2014 as part of the project funded by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan. It is a refrigerant that combines extraordinarily high environmental performance with a GWP of less than 1, maintaining the same performance as the HFC R410A currently used (GWP 2090 /2090 times the greenhouse effect compared to CO2).
The University of Tokyo and AGC have managed to develop a safe composition that suppresses the rapid increase in pressure due to the decomposition of AMOLEA™ 1123 to a certain level by the addition of propane, according to the findings of the NEDO project "Development of Technology and Evaluation Techniques for next-generation refrigerants with a low GWP value" commissioned by the University of Tokyo.
The new composition of AMOLEA™ 1123 (GWP 0.3 or greenhouse effect of 1/3 of CO2) consists of a certain percentage of propane (R290: GWP 3 or greenhouse effect of 3 times CO2), which is a versatile refrigerant with low GWP. With this achievement, the development of a refrigerant with a GWP of 10 or less has made significant progress and entered the final stage.
Based on the results of this development, AGC will sequentially launch new refrigerants with ultra-low GWP and high safety, for use in a variety of equipment, including residential and commercial air conditioners. In addition, as a next-generation refrigerant for electric vehicles, the mixed refrigerant AMOLEA™ 1123 (AMOLEA™ 10X) with a GWP of 10 or less, to be applied for ASHRAE in June 2022, is under consideration for certification in 2025 by SAE.
