Fridge maker TCL opts for HFO1233zd

USA/CHINA: Honeywell has announced that TCL, one of China’s largest appliance manufacturers, is using the new low GWP insulation propellant HFO1233zd in its domestic refrigerators.

TCL manufactures approximately 2 million refrigerators annually at its factory in Hefei. Chinese manufacturers produce 70 million refrigerators per year, which is more than half of all refrigerators produced globally. Many are insulated with high-GWP chemicals such as HCFCs and HFCs.

Sold by Honeywell as Solstice Liquid Blowing Agent (LBA), HFO1233zd has a GWP of 1 (under AR5). It is non-flammable and considered VOC-exempt by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Honeywell’s US-based, world-scale capacity manufacturing plant for Solstice LBA started up in May 2014.

Honeywell says that there are now more than a dozen appliance manufacturers worldwide using Solstice LBA. TCL began the transition to HFOs earlier this year when it converted from a hydrocarbon/HFC blend to a hydrocarbon/Solstice LBA blend for export refrigerator production at its Hefei, China facility.

“Solstice LBA’s ultra-low-GWP provides a 4% improvement in energy efficiency, making it the obvious solution to meet our customers’ expectations to continually reduce climate change impact,” said Zhengming Cui, TCL’s chief technology officer.

“Worldwide demand for Solstice LBA is growing at an unprecedented rate as industries seek to use environmentally preferable solutions to achieve energy efficiency, meet regulations and lower their carbon footprints,” said Patrick Clifford, global business manager, Honeywell foam blowing agents. “TCL’s adoption of Solstice LBA not only advances our next-generation blowing agent technology in China, but it also builds on the momentum that we are seeing globally for an alternative to high-GWP blowing agents. We are committed to helping appliance OEMs through this transition to low-GWP solutions such as Solstice LBA.”

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