TABLE OF CONTENTS

Industry and special applications
Industrial Processes & Laboratories
NH 3
/ HC / CO 2
: For many years ammonia has been the
refrigerant of choice for manufacturing sites, for example,
Xerox and Fujifilm plants both use ammonia
refrigeration, and as a secondary refrigerant for mine
air conditioning. Hydrocarbon refrigeration has been
used to a certain extent in the chemical industries for
the liquefaction of CO 2
and other gases. In oil refineries,
and petrochemical plants, hydrocarbon refrigeration is
used to maintain certain processes at their needed low
temperatures (for example, in alkylation of butenes and
butane to produce a high octane gasoline component).
There are also examples of hydrocarbon and ammonia
chillers in the pharmaceutical industry. Both the Roche
Indianapolis campus and Roche Ireland Ltd, which produces
active pharmaceutical ingredients, have invested
in centralised ammonia chiller plants, whilst at its German
logistics centre Roche is using a mixture of ammonia,
propane and CO 2
. Moreover, the Roche UK headquarters
two ammonia chillers and three hydrocarbon
chillers provide the office air conditioning and computer
server room cooling. CO 2
has become an interesting option
for laboratory coolers and freezers in North America
and Europe, including in a laboratory refrigeration plant
in Québec used for testing natural refrigerants, whilst a
laboratory freezer has been converted to hydrocarbons.
Solar refrigeration: vaccine coolers &
food refrigerators
HC: In the last decade several companies have developed
hydrocarbon (R600a) solar powered vaccine coolers,
including Danish, British, as well as a refrigiration
manufacturer from Swaziland, which presented its first
prototype vaccine coolers in 2010. These unique coolers
can operate on intermittent or poor mains supply, battery-free
solar power or a combination of the two. The
“SolarChill” cooler using only HCs for refrigeration and
foams was developed and supported by various manufacturers,
UNEP, UNICEF and GIZ.
A $2.7 US million (€2 million) grant by the Global Environment
Facility (GEF) will support the installation of 75
SolarChill vaccine coolers in community clinics and 25
SolarChill food refrigerators in schools, small enterprises
and hospitals in Kenya, Swaziland and Colombia.
Winter sports
NH 3
: Ammonia has become increasingly popular in recent
years for cooling ice rinks due to the HCFC phaseout.
Several European ice rinks use ammonia refrigeration
systems, including “Curl Aberdeen” ice rink in
Scotland, Europe’s largest open-air stadium with an ice
rink (Karlstad, Sweden), and the iconic Alexandra Palace
in London, UK. Ammonia refrigeration has also been
used to refrigerate temporary ice rinks, such as for example
the outdoor rink used for the US ice hockey league in
Chicago in 2009. Other winter sport applications using
ammonia refrigeration include the SNORAS indoor skiing
Snow Arena in Lithuania and the world’s third largest
indoor snow park in Dubai, the main attraction at the
Mall of the Emirates shopping centre in Dubai, which
offers 5 ski slopes and is covered with 6000t of snow.
The bobsleigh, luge and skeleton refrigerated tracks in
Vancouver, Canada, used for the Winter Olympics and in
Königssee, Germany, used for the 2011 World Cup, also
use ammonia.
Special Applications: space station & Biosphere
NH 3
: The most prominent examples of the use of ammonia
in special applications are for air-conditioning in the
international space shuttle and the ecosystems of the
Biosphere II research project in Arizona, which will be
used in the future for climate change research.
27
CO 2
: The world’s first ice ink using 100% CO 2
refrigeration
was installed in 2010 in Arena Marcel Dutil in Quebec,
Canada. It received ASHRAE’s Technology Award for Industrial
Facilities in 2011.