Editorial by Didier Coulomb

For many years, the IIR has been seeking to improve the performances of natural refrigerants in order to address the issues of ozone depletion and global warming. The Gustav Lorentzen Conferences have been consistently highly successful. The latest was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, on September 8-10, 2008 and attracted 397 participants. The next event in the series will take place in Sydney, Australia, on April 12-14, 2010. CO2 is still the most investigated refrigerant. Ammonia is still very widely used and is also very efficient, despite the risks that it presents and the IIR is convinced that it also has a great future. Since 2005, the IIR has held conferences on ammonia in Ohrid, in the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia. The next one will be held on May 7-9, 2009. In 1999, the IIR published a bilingual French-English book, Ammonia as a Refrigerant, that was a best-seller. Because of recent events and trends, a new revised and augmented edition has just been published in English (the French version is to follow). You can order Ammonia as a Refrigerant via the IIR's Web site: www.iifiir.org With the agreement of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the IIR will hold a workshop on ammonia during the next United Nations Conference on ozone depletion which will be held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2008. This conference will also provide a good opportunity to promote ammonia as a refrigerant. Of course, the IIR will also have an opportunity, during this conference and during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Poznan, Poland, next December, to speak during the high-level segments, as it has over the past years. We will come back to this in the next issue of the Newsletter. Didier Coulomb, Director of the IIR