Researchers have built the first refrigerant-free system to reach sub-zero temperatures, a breakthrough that could reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
Imaging if this technology could cool a data centre.
Old school refrigerants were absolutely horrendous ghg even modern ones are pretty bad with R134 being 1430x worse of a ghg than CO2
If we can reduce that, that’s good! And metals like titanium are recyclable so yes initially extracting them is bad but the full lifecycle isn’t as terrible
R134 was the “safe” refrigerant to replace R-12 because R12 is 11000x more potent of a ghg than co2
There are some new refrigeration units that use R600 but the vast majority of refrigerators are still R134
R600 being a highly flammable gas (it’s butane) has slowed its rollout a lot. Hence why a solid state non volatile refrigerant is still a cool development
Old school refrigerants were absolutely horrendous ghg even modern ones are pretty bad with R134 being 1430x worse of a ghg than CO2
If we can reduce that, that’s good! And metals like titanium are recyclable so yes initially extracting them is bad but the full lifecycle isn’t as terrible
Modern refrigerants don’t use R134
https://www.freon.com/en/industries/refrigeration/residential-refrigeration
R134 was the “safe” refrigerant to replace R-12 because R12 is 11000x more potent of a ghg than co2
There are some new refrigeration units that use R600 but the vast majority of refrigerators are still R134
R600 being a highly flammable gas (it’s butane) has slowed its rollout a lot. Hence why a solid state non volatile refrigerant is still a cool development