Greenhouse gas mitigation and electricity saving potential from replacing refrigerants in Thai refrigerator

Abstract

Refrigerant leak from refrigerator production and operation is one of major sources that causes greenhouse gases (GHG) emission due to the high global warming potential (GWP) from existing Tetrafluoroethane (R-134a) which is hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants in Thailand. There are three factors to leakages, production, operation & maintenance and disposal of the refrigeration system. Therefore, replacing the refrigerant with a new lower GWP one will reduce GHG emissions from refrigerant leaks. For that reason, producers have started to use Isobutane (R-600a) refrigerants replacing R-134a by 97% from lower GWP. However, R-600a contains flammability competence which causes relatively small amount usage not more than 150 gram per refrigeration unit. This research provides a method to evaluate the greenhouse gas reduction from refrigerant modifications measured from 2016–2020,​ which reduced by 499,818 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO 2eq) furthermore, increased energy efficiency from refrigerant modifications reduced greenhouse gas 808,677 tCO 2eq. In the absence of statistics indicating the amount of refrigeration equipment disposed, an estimation of such is required. Provided that an appropriate base year of collected data is defined.