The Cool War - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Not to be confused with "The Cool War

The Cool War (novel)

The Cool War is a science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl published in 1981 by Ballantine Books.-Plot outline:Like many of Pohl's novels, this opens in a world reduced by a crisis, in this case the loss of fossil fuels. Solar power is a major, albeit insufficient, source of power. Electricity is...

", a novel by Frederik Pohl

Frederik Pohl

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years — from his first published work, "Elegy to a Dead Planet: Luna" , to his most recent novel, All the Lives He Led .He won the National Book Award in 1980 for his novel Jem...

The Cool War refers to the debate about the next-generation refrigerant in car air conditioning

Air conditioning

An air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...

worldwide, with an ongoing dispute between the Alliance for CO₂ Solutions supporting the uptake of sustainable carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

(CO₂) as a refrigerant

Refrigerant

A refrigerant is a substance used in a heat cycle usually including, for enhanced efficiency, a reversible phase change from a liquid to a gas. Traditionally, fluorocarbons, especially chlorofluorocarbons, were used as refrigerants, but they are being phased out because of their ozone depletion...

in passenger cars, and chemical giants developing new chemical blends.

The Alliance and its supporters – scientists, NGOs

Non-governmental organization

A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...

and business leaders – urge the car industry to replace high global warming chemical substances with the natural refrigerant

Refrigerant

carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

(CO₂, R744 / R-744) in car cooling and heating. This, they argue, would lead to 10% less car emissions, and knock out 1% of total greenhouse gas

Greenhouse gas

A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...

emissions worldwide. If CO₂ Technology is applied in other sectors, such as commercial and industrial refrigeration, heat pumps for water heating etc., it may even save up to 3% of the world’s greenhouse gases.

Opponents of the Alliance claim that CO₂ Technology is not cost-efficient and safe, hence seeking to postpone the global industry decision to be taken to develop new chemical blends instead.

Background

The Cool War has emanated from the decision of the European Union to phase out the current high global warming refrigerant HFC-134a in car air conditioning from January 2011 onwards. To comply with the legislation, carmakers have to decide today on a new refrigerant, as they typically need 3-4 years to develop and introduce a new car platform including the air conditioning system. (It would take much less time to design merely a new air conditioning system to install in a new version of an existing model.) The current total value of the car air conditioning market is estimated to be $14.5 billion in 2007.

Arguments for CO₂

The Alliance for CO₂ Solutions and its supporters agree that the refrigerant CO₂ is:

More environmentally friendly with the lowest Global warming potential
Global warming potential
Global-warming potential is a relative measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere. It compares the amount of heat trapped by a certain mass of the gas in question to the amount of heat trapped by a similar mass of carbon dioxide. A GWP is calculated over a specific time...

(GWP) of all currently used and proposed refrigerants. CO₂ does not deplete the ozone layer. Since the carbon dioxide used in car air conditioning is a recycled industrial waste product it becomes environmentally neutral. Overall, using a CO₂-based air conditioning system will reduce total car emissions by 10%, thereby sparing the planet 1% of total greenhouse gases.
More technically ready because CO₂ models have been developed and tested in all climates, being now ready for mass production. They are faster to heat and cool a car, and show a superior performance in over 90% of all driving conditions.
More cost-efficient because as a refrigerant itself, CO₂ is cheap and worldwide available. The servicing of CO₂ systems will be less costly and less complicated than that for present systems. For the consumer the total cost of ownership is lowest with CO₂ as it will significantly cut fuel consumption by the air conditioning device. Carmakers have to make an initial investment estimated at €20 per unit, with no additional costs once CO₂ Technology enters into mass production.
Usable in Heat Pumps because at least one CO₂ system under development can act as a heat pump
Heat pump
A heat pump is a machine or device that effectively "moves" thermal energy from one location called the "source," which is at a lower temperature, to another location called the "sink" or "heat sink", which is at a higher temperature. An air conditioner is a particular type of heat pump, but the...

, supplying cabin heat and windshield defrosting even before the engine has warmed up.
Although the Alliance may not mention it, since CO₂ is so cheap and essentially harmless to the environment, the reservoirs in such systems could store additional liquid R744 to keep a vehicle cool even when the engine (or compressor) was not running.

Arguments against CO₂

Opponents in The Cool War claim that CO₂ Technology is more expensive than current systems and future chemical blends as it requires the design of completely new high-pressure systems where so-called “drop-in solutions” (the adaptation of current systems to new substances) would be more cost-efficient. Their second key argument is that CO₂ is toxic, leading to suffocation in high concentrations.

Both arguments are challenged, however, by the Alliance for CO₂ Solutions. According to the group the initial costs of CO₂ systems will be around €5 higher than drop-in solutions. Over a car’s life cycle, however, CO₂ air conditioning systems will be more cost-efficient than any currently used or proposed new chemical blends. (see Arguments for CO₂).
Regarding the issue of toxicity, has been classified as Safety Class A1 (low-toxic, non-flammable refrigerant) by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) – the highest safety class possible. As the charge of CO₂ to the air conditioning systems is very small (200-400 g) there is no realistic danger for the passengers, even in case of accidental release.

Arguments for non-CO₂ refrigerants

Refrigerants such as the greenpeace-developed 'Greenfreeze', based on purified butane
Butane
Butane is a gas with the formula C4H10 that is an alkane with four carbon atoms. The term may refer to any of two structural isomers, or to a mixture of them: in the IUPAC nomenclature, however, butane refers only to the unbranched n-butane isomer; the other one being called "methylpropane" or...

/propane
Propane
Propane is a three-carbon alkane with the molecular formula , normally a gas, but compressible to a transportable liquid. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum refining, it is commonly used as a fuel for engines, oxy-gas torches, barbecues, portable stoves, and residential central...

mixtures, are entirely 'natural', and due to increased efficiency over refrigerants such as R134a, allow the use of very small amounts of refrigerant to be used.
Use of pure hydrocarbon refrigerants, which are 'backward compatible' with even early Freon (R-12) car air conditioning systems, would allow these systems to be easily converted (without modification), increasing their efficiency, and preventing further release of harmful R-134a and R-12 to the atmosphere.

Arguments against non-CO₂ refrigerants

Butane and propane are very flammable petroleum products; they are used as fuels for gas barbecue

Barbecue

Barbecue or barbeque , used chiefly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia is a method and apparatus for cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of...

grills, disposable lighters, etc. Like gasoline, to which it chemically is closely related, propane has a tendency to explode if mixed with oxygen and ignited in an enclosed container.

The use of highly flammable hydrocarbon gases such as butane and propane as automotive refrigerants raises serious safety concerns. The EPA, in evaluating motor vehicle air conditioning substitutes for CFC-12 (Freon, or R-12) under its SNAP program, has classified as "Unacceptable Substitutes" other "Flammable blend[s] of hydrocarbons" by reason of "insufficient data to demonstrate safety." The EPA defines "Unacceptable" in this context as "illegal for use as a CFC-12 substitute in motor vehicle air conditioners". All of the refrigerants which EPA approved for motor vehicle use in place of CFC-12 (as of September 28, 2006) contain no more than 4% total flammable hydrocarbons (butane, isobutane, and/or isopentane). Therefore, it appears unlikely, for safety reasons, that EPA will approve 'Greenfreeze' or similar hydrocarbon-based refrigerants for automotive use.

Latest and next steps

In September 2007, the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) officially announced its decision to use CO₂ as the refrigerant in next-generation air conditioning. Other carmakers from Europe and the rest of the world may follow the German lead.

A working group at ACEA, the European carmakers’ association, was to be drafting a common position on the issue to be adopted across the whole industry by end-2007.

However on April 9th 2009, German public television channel ARD aired a report claiming that VDA members would be using loopholes in the law to avoid complying with the EU directive.

Positions

Media coverage

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Background

Arguments for CO2

Arguments against CO2

Arguments for non-CO2 refrigerants

Arguments against non-CO2 refrigerants