RefCon / Presenters / Ben Adamson
Ben was formerly Managing Director of Refrigeration Engineering International from 1987 to 2019, and is now a private consultant. REI worked worldwide in process cooling onshore and offshore, for the oil, gas and petrochemical industries. He has engineering degrees from the Universities of Adelaide and NSW, and is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and AIRAH.
He has published a textbook and many papers for international conferences, and serves on committees of Standards Australia (including ME-006 which produced the new AS/NZS817 and 5149 series of standards) and the International Electrotechnical Commission for equipment for use in hazardous area.
Safe installations with A3 refrigerants
The phase-down of high-GWP refrigerants and concerns over the long-term viability of HFOs mean that flammable refrigerants such as propane are increasingly common, especially in larger packages. While there are obvious risks with these systems, oil, gas and petrochemical industries have also worked with highly flammable gases, often under high pressure, with an excellent safety record. However, in such installations the entire plant is usually classified as a hazardous area.
Modern package chillers using A3 refrigerants include many inbuilt safety features, avoiding the need to treat the entire HVAC&R installation as a hazardous area. Safe A3 HVAC&R installations need not be onerous or expensive, but require some different design approaches. This paper will highlight some approaches for achieving economical and safe A3 installations.
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