hydrocarbons21.com talked with small yet very ambitious companies about their new products using propane refrigerant soon to come to the Australian market and beyond. They were all enthusiastic about the future and judging by the reactions of their Chinese and Japanese competitors they are ‘onto something’.

For too long these hydrocarbon companies have kept low profiles at previous editions of ARBS, being afraid of a negative industry reaction. This changed last week as they prepared to enter the market with new products. One really got a sense that their competitors were rushing back home to speed up their hydrocarbon developments in order to be amongst the first to market.

Showcased hydrocarbon products

In contrast to the lack of hydrocarbon focus at the 2010 Gustav Lorentzen conference held next door, the following companies created a ‘buzz’ around hydrocarbon technology at the trade show:

tia air: The company launched their HDXI Hydrocarbon Super High Efficiency DC Inverters using Hychill’s Minus 50 refrigerant. Preliminary efficiency tests reveal an Energy Efficiency Rating (EER) of up to 4.7 for these 2.6kW wall split systems, while that of a production model is set to be between 5.0 and 6.0. Translated into European standards, this is A +++ !

With this new product set to come to Australia later this year, “environmentally concerned consumers can rest easy in the knowledge that using a tia HDXI air conditioner (AC) to keep cool in summer and warm in winter will have the smallest impact on the planet of any comparable system currently available anywhere in the world”, Brent Hoare, of the Green Cooling Association, commented.

Benson Air Conditioning had a new lease of life at ARBS 2010 with some very direct advertising to promote their new range of ‘Enviro3’ wall split air conditioning systems combined with a heat pump condenser and a hot water system. These systems use Hychill propane again, with the range going from 2.4kW up to 12.6kW (3 phase). Benson has engineered their AC Hot Water system to remove the heat produced as a by-product of normal operation and transfer that heat to the hot water system to heat water.

Recom Engineering: Competition will be coming fast from Recom Engineering, who will be launching a similar system, the ‘Fujin Heat Pump Hot Water / Split AC Combo’, under their Chinese owned brand called Fujin Refrigeration, this summer.