The Cold Truth about Refrigerants and Refrigeration

TOPIC: The Cold Truth about Refrigerants and Refrigeration

    By: Andy Hayes

Presentation Summary:    

There’s a lot of talk currently about the environmental impacts of refrigerants. However, unless we opt to completely eliminate the cool comforts of our modern lifestyle, refrigerant is not going away. It will always be a necessary evil in the built environment.

The talk takes a trip down memory lane and reviews the vapor compression cycle and how the first-generation refrigerant systems performed. We will revisit the high performance and energy efficiency of the first generation of air conditioning systems and reflect on the unintended consequences.

We will discuss the next few iterations of refrigerant blends, focusing on the performance, trade-offs and sustainability sides of all the changes to refrigerant systems along with the sustainability and environmental impacts.

Where is refrigerant today and what are the real-life limitations of where we can go tomorrow?

Speaker Bio:     

Andy Hayes has over 15 years’ experience in various HVAC roles and industries. His career has covered a wide range of development and leadership positions in hydronic heating and cooling as well as refrigerant based air conditioning.

Andy has a strong heat transfer and fluid dynamics foundation holding a Master’s of Science in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Andy is the Raleigh Branch Manager for Hahn Mason Air Systems, Inc.