2016 ASHRAE Winter Conference

This presentation intends to offer an overview about the key challenges facing the air-conditioning industry in high-ambient countries in meeting global and national environmental and energy commitments while examining new low-GWP alternatives. The introduction of debates about key definitions like high ambient and low-GWP will be also discussed as part of different perspectives and views. The presentation will also include the driving forces and key objectives of the UNEP-UNIDO PRAHA project and its relation to other testing and research work.

The core component of UNEP/UNIDO project for promoting low-GWP alternatives in high-ambient countries is building and testing prototypes by local OEMs with the support of several international technology providers. The presentation introduces the findings of the testing of the prototypes developed under the project for four different categories of air-conditioning applications using four different types of alternative refrigerants. Detailed background on the testing methodology, design limitations and the criteria for selecting the capacities, refrigerants and design parameters are included in the presentation. The presentation also reflects the technical challenges the project faced while building and testing the prototypes.

PRAHA project went beyond building and testing prototypes, with alternative refrigerants, that can work efficiently in high-ambient conditions. This presentation introduces the work and findings for assessing the impact of relevant energy efficiency standards on the process of refrigerant selection, examining the economic factors that could affect the decision of adopting low-GWP alternatives, understanding barriers to ease the technology transfer and facilitate transferring the sound use of alternatives in the air-conditioning industry. The presentation also includes key findings and outcomes about examining how using the district cooling applications can reduce dependency on high/higher GWP alternatives and promote not-in-kind technologies.

The main objective of PRAHA project is to assist the process of decision making at government and industry levels in high ambient countries. This presentation includes the key messages concluded from PRAHA project concerning many policy and technical aspects that need to be considered by the respective decision makers at both levels. Discussion includes key recommendations related to comprehensive risk assessment, the need of the servicing sector, the introduction of relevative standards and codes, and and the introduction of incentives for the industry and end-users.