EU Regulation on fluorinated gas impacts

The revised F-Gas Regulation No 517/2014 was published on May 20, 2014 in the Official Journal of the European Union.
It entered into force on June 9 and will apply from January 1, 2015. The main provisions were summarized in the latest issue of the IIR Newsletter (No. 58); the whole text can be consulted here: http://goo.gl/0pB8gJ

F-gas Regulation impacts
Alongside the implementation of a HFC phase-down, the text includes a range of HFC bans in new equipment, notably in commercial refrigeration by 2022.
A key measure concerns HFCs with a GWP over 2,500 that will no longer be allowed to be used to service and maintain refrigeration equipment from 2020. It affects R404A, R507A and R422A, all of which were substitutes for R22 and R502 and all with GWPs of over 3,000.
The biggest impact will be on users of R404A (GWP = 3922), which is widely used in commercial and industrial refrigeration and accounting for 46% of worldwide F-gases. Purchasing new equipment using R404A is now not economically viable.

What alternatives to R404A ?
In advance of the legislation, there has been an undoubted shift towards natural refrigerants – with negligible GWP – in commercial refrigeration: CO2 in numerous supermarkets new systems and hydrocarbons in many new plug-in commercial cabinets.
Until now, there have been three main replacements for R404A: R407A, R407F and R442A, which are blends of R134a, R125 and R32 (+R227ea and R152a for R442A). Their safety classification is A1 (non flammable), however their GWP is relatively high: 1,990 for R407A, 1,824 for R407F and 1,888 for R442A. According to the manufacturers, R442A is said to demonstrate the highest COP and cooling capacity of all R404 alternatives.
In addition to these, there are a number of other new or soon to be available refrigerant blends utilising the new HFO refrigerants. These offer lower GWPs. Some are non-flammable and some, with even lower GWPs are classified as “mildly flammable” (A2L classification).