HFC consumption in Bangladesh

According to a UNEP document published in June 2017, the HFC consumption in Bangladesh was of 810.68 metric tonnes, including 94.5% of R134a.

On June 16, 2017, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published a Project Proposal for Bangladesh, consisting in a demonstration for the conversion of domestic refrigerator manufacturing facility from HFC-134a to isobutane as a refrigerant and conversion of compressor manufacturing facility from HFC-134a based compressors to isobutane-based compressors.

The UNEP document presents a summary of HFC consumption in Bangladesh in 2015 and shows the predominance of HFC-134a, which represents 94.5% of the total consumption of HFCs. HFC-134a used in domestic refrigerator manufacturing represents 26.9% of the total HFC consumption.

 

Table 1: HFC consumption in Bangladesh in 2015 in metric tonnes (mt)

 In 2016, the local production of domestic refrigerators was done by four manufacturers using mainly R134a as a refrigerant, with a total production of about 2.5 million units in 2016. In the same period, approximately 200,000 units were imported in the country.

The Project Proposal presented by the UNEP consists in the conversion of all production lines of Walton, the biggest domestic refrigerator manufacturer in Bangladesh. The new product will have an average refrigerant charge of 40 to 90 grams of isobutane per unit instead of an average 126 grams of R134a.