Carrier says ozone regulations are boosting chiller rental demand

Carrier Rental Systems (CRS), the temperature control, power and pump rental specialist, said the phasing out of R22 refrigerants used in industrial air conditioning and cooling systems is leading to an increase in rental enquiries for its process chillers and air conditioning equipment.

From the end of December this year the use of virgin R22 will be banned, with recycled R22 being phased out by the end of 2014. CRS said its customer research had shown that many UK manufacturing companies are still to implement a strategy to comply with the legislation changes and risk being caught up in reduced availability, increased prices of recycled R22 and possible refrigeration system downtime.

In response, CRS is making available 25% of its fleet to clients who need to implement a rental cooling solution to cover production time in the event of shortages in replacement refrigerant or during upgrades to cooling systems.

Keith Browse, a director at CRS in the UK, said; "We are anticipating that demand for hire equipment will soar this year as clients are faced with two issues of replacing capital for the purchase of equipment, but more significantly the looming legislation changes to the use of R22 which will come into place at the end of the year.

"I think many companies will opt for long term rental solutions until the economy picks up and they feel more comfortable with the R22 availability situation. I think many companies are putting off major changes to their refrigeration equipment until they have seen what has happened and what solutions other manufactures have implemented", he said.

R22 is a HCFC low temperature refrigerant that is used in process chillers, industrial refrigerant plants, commercial cold storage facilities and air-conditioning systems throughout the world. It is estimated by the Carbon Trust that 70% of UK food manufacturing sites have a refrigeration system using R22.

According to CRS, HCFCs including R22 were banned in new refrigeration systems in 2000. From 31 December 2009 it will no longer be possible to use virgin HCFCs for maintenance of refrigeration systems and the use of recycled HCFCs will be banned from the end of 2014. After this date all R22 users will have either had to have found acceptable alternative refrigerants or have invested in new plant.