What are natural refrigerants?
Natural refrigerants are naturally-occurring substances, such as:
- hydrocarbons (propane, iso-butane)
- CO2
- ammonia.
These substances can be used as cooling agents in refrigerators and air conditioners. In this regard, they can replace synthetic refrigerants such as HFCs.
Unilever
Retailers large and small throughout Australia are benefiting from innovations in refrigeration. As an example, Unilever have been rolling out 4,000 Streets ice cream freezers that use a natural refrigerant – this improves the energy efficiency of those units by 10%.
This Unilever Streets ice cream freezer uses a hydrocarbon (HC) natural refrigerant and is approximately 10% more energy efficient than their pervious model.
As the world’s largest producer of ice cream, Unilever has accelerated their global roll-out of freezer cabinets that use hydrocarbon natural refrigerants.
To date, they have purchased 1.5 million of them and plan to purchase many more.[1]