Sustainable heat exchanger technology for commercial and industrial Heat Pumps using natural refrigerants [16]

Going through the worst energy crisis in decades, society is struggling to break free from its dependance on gas, coal and oil and find alternative, reliable heat transfer sources. Heat Pumps represent an important piece in the new energy puzzle. In this presentation, we will describe how Alfa Laval heat exchanger development makes it possible to create efficient and sustainable fossil-free heating solutions using natural refrigerants. We will highlight the latest developments of the plate heat exchanger technology and describe a few cases that have been long operating successfully.

Heat exchangers are central components in Heat Pumps, largely determining their overall efficiency. Besides delivering maximum heat transfer, a heat exchanger in a Heat Pump must also be capable of operating with two phases (gas and liquid), large temperature differences, and in some industrial applications they must also withstand dirty and corrosive media.

Thanks to their outstanding heat transfer efficiency, plate heat exchangers (PHEs) outperform shell-and-tube heat exchangers, offering a much more compact solution and in recent years a growing trend has been to use them also in industrial and larger commercial Heat Pumps operating with natural refrigerants such as R-717, hydrocarbons, and R-744.

This presentation talks about the latest development in plate heat exchanger technology used for a new generation of Heat Pumps that offers reliable operation, high energy efficiency, short payback periods and do not have the drawback of using a refrigerant with a high global warming potential.

It also describes the Alfa Laval program towards delivering sustainable heat exchangers from the angle of carbon footprint certification Alfa Laval has the target of becoming carbon neutral by 2030, and thereby aims to eliminate emissions from products, raw material extraction to end-of-life.