How will the refrigerant industry change in this decade?
We will use different types and monitor their use and disposal more closely.
While refrigerants cool commercial, industrial and residential facilities they also heat up the atmosphere. The refrigerant gases leak and while they stay in the atmosphere for a shorter term than carbon dioxide, they heat up the atmosphere to a much greater degree. This Catch 22 problem will become worse in a heating world. Carbon dioxide and methane rightly get their attention in the climate change discussion, but fluorinated gases (of which refrigerants are the largest part) are a fast growing category of greenhouse gases and are now often referred to as super-pollutants. They are used all around us in our cold supply chains, vehicles, data centres and in buildings.
Luckily solutions exist. One solution is to move to natural refrigerants (air, water and chemicals such as ammonia, butane, carbon dioxide and propane). To enable companies to effectively manage their refrigerants three steps are required. First, measure what is used and where it is used and how much is used. Second, mitigate and manage leaks. An equipment that is leaking refrigerants is also using more energy so plugging leaks also saves costs. Third, personnel will also have to learn about refrigerants. So far it is mostly relegated to the corner of the basements.
To move the needle on this problem we have to build skills.
Listen to this podcast from Adrian Bukmanis to explain all this and also discuss what business opportunities should look out for. First, there would be investments in the production of natural refrigerants. Second, there will be opportunities to support companies as they install monitoring software and make the switch. Finally, there will be a need for investment in safely disposing off the current generation of refrigerants when they come to the end of their life. There is currently no way to draw them back down so managing the safe disposal of refrigerants is absolutely imperative. These opportunities should emerge more strongly as regulations tighten.
Available on Anchor, Apple, Google, Spotify and YouTube.
More information on Adrian Bukmanis and his company Veridien:
Veridien Refrigerant Management is using digital technologies for managing refrigerant inventories, mitigating leaks and educating those with refrigerants under their care. They are also building partnerships to manage the end-of-life processing of the refrigerants so they don’t enter the atmosphere.
Veridien was started by Adrian after a decade working with cooling systems in South east Asia. In a previous life he worked in international motorsport where he realized what a difference is made by combing “good engineering and data”.
