Asahi Glass (AGC Asahi Glass) announced that in October it obtained an approval of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) for the new refrigerant R-1224yd(Z) which AGC has been undertaking to commercialize in the market. It was the first case that a Japanese company obtained the approval for a new chemical substance. Based on the approval, AGC is going to produce the refrigerant commercially from the beginning of 2018 as planned long before.　

R-1224yd(Z) is a new refrigerant of the low-pressure type by AGC’s own development, which is a substance having HCFO－1224yd(Z) as a single composition. It is an alternative refrigerant to replace HFC‐245fa and usable for turbo freezers, binary generators and heat pumps. The trade name of AGC’s product is “AMOREA 1224yd”.

The feature of the product is that it has attained less than GWP1 despite having a similar or better refrigerating effect and stability than HFC-245fa.

According to AGC, its energy-saving property is nearly as high as HCFC-123 which is a restricted substance under the
Ozone Layer Protection Law, but its volumetric efficiency is 1.6 times to enable reducing the number of machine, down-sizing or space-saving owing to the realization of high output.

In addition the refrigerant is very stable and easy to prevent rusting, so that the frequency and costs can be reduced for maintenance. Furthermore, its retrofit property requires no substantial modification for application to the existing facilities. Its toxicity is low as classified “A” of ASHRAE with a permissible concentration of 1,000ppm. Flammability is classified as A of non-flammable. Either high-pressure gas safety law or cfc-emission control law is not applicable, allowing to post non-cfc labels on the facilities or machines used.
　
Jiro Inoue, Manager of Fluoro-chemicals Dept. of AGC’s Chemicals Company says that there are about ten major manufacturers of turbo refrigerators and the size of refrigerant market is 17 thousand tons, and that the largest market will be the US where turbo refrigerators are most widely diffused.

The refrigerant market of Japan is 5% of all, but there exist influential manufacturers of turbo refrigerator, one of which is Ebara Refrigeration Equipment System. Ebara has already decided to adopt AMOREA 1224yd for the next-coming products. 　

The manager said, “A variety of refrigerants have been developed to improve efficiency or attain a lower GWP, but we deem AMOREA 1224yd to be one of the ultimate solutions so far as the refrigerant for turbo refrigerators is concerned.
Also for the other refrigerants including those for room air-conditioning equipment we intend to accelerate to make them usable practically in cooperation with the advanced equipment manufacturers who are environment-conscious.”