Milwaukee, United States: As part of its long-term refrigerant roadmap, Johnson Controls has announced two platforms of high-efficiency chillers available with low-GWP (global warming potential) options.

The company, the announcement said, has extended its portfolio of YORK chillers to include two key product families that use the alternative refrigerant, R-513A – the YORK YVWA water-cooled screw chiller and the YORK YMC² magnetic bearing water-cooled centrifugal chiller. The offering, the announcement added, covers a broad range from 433kW to 3516kW (120 to 1,000 tonnes) for water-cooled applications.

“This is the first major chiller family to be offered with low-GWP alternatives,” said Laura Wand, Vice President of Global Chillers, Johnson Controls Building Efficiency Business. “We will continue to expand our chiller portfolio with highly efficient chillers and additional low-GWP offerings.”

The company revealed that R-513A, or Chemours’ OpteonTM XP10, is a non-flammable (A1) azeotropic alternative to R-134a, providing lower GWP and comparable performance. By providing efficient R-134A chillers that are future compatible with R-513A, Johnson Controls said that it is protecting the long-term investment customers make in its chillers. “Although low-GWP refrigerants play an important role, the greatest contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions and operating costs is by investing in highly efficient equipment,” said Wand. “The YORK chiller portfolio addresses the larger impact of emissions, reducing energy consumption, which can represent 95 percent or more of a chiller’s lifetime carbon emissions. And the YORK R-134A global chiller offering provides peace of mind as customers can use R-513A.”

Furthermore, Johnson Controls said that the company’s work to develop and launch broad offerings using R-513A, and to advance research on the use of mildly flammable refrigerants, is part of its overall environmental commitments to the White House Council on Environmental Quality.