Dubai, UAE, 13 November 2018: Honeywell is commercialising its Solstice N40 refrigerant, said Sanjeev Rastogi, Vice President and General Manager, Fluorine Products, who added that the product is ideal for commercial refrigeration applications, as R-22 is being phased out in the Middle East region. “In the Middle East,” he said, “we feel this is a much more energy-efficient choice than R-404A, which is an HFC. It also has lower GWP than R-404A, so a region, like the GCC region, could go from R-22 to an HFO solution, like Solstice N40.”

Rastogi said that this is a trend they see globally, especially in Europe, where most of the retrofits in commercial refrigeration are with HFO solutions. “Many of the supermarket chains of these companies are global chains,” he said, “so the solutions they are looking for are global solutions, as well.”

Rastogi added that there is a strong level of adoption of more environmentally friendly refrigerants, even without the aid of regulations. “There are innovators in every market,” he said. “There are always progressive companies who want to choose products with a lower environmental footprint and if the solution happens to be energy efficient and can justify the cost involved, we have seen people transition.”

Hannah Jo Uy is Assistant Editor at Climate Control Middle East magazine. She may be contacted at hannah@cpi-industry.com