SIRAC members urged to look at alternatives to reduce Co2 & save energy

Members of the Solomon Islands Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Association (SIRAC) have been urged to look at alternatives to reduce discharging of more Co2 into the air and save money.

As part of the demonstration of innovative technology and business models for efficient and clean cooling in the Pacific, SIRAC members held a workshop yesterday in Honiara to look at the alternatives.

Specialist in the field and Solomon Islands National University lecturer Tony Nori facilitated the session with the support of officials from the Ministry of Energy.

The workshop looked at the three refrigerant gases commonly used in the split air-conditioning systems in the country namely R22, R410a and R32 and how effective they are and their impacts on climate change.

Nori highlighted that as professionals in the field they can help to reduce Co2 by applying alternative ways to reduce carbon-dioxide that is being released into the air and one of the concepts he talked about was sheltering. He explained that the idea of sheltering the split air-conditioning outdoor units can improve cooling efficiency and reduce power consumption for end users.

The workshop was also told that split AC (aircon) is currently one of the highest imported electrical appliances in the country due to climatic conditions and rapid building developments and they have a big impact as far as electricity bill is concerned due to high tariff.

Because of this, finding alternatives to reduce electrical energy from split ACs’ can save substantial amount of money and such savings environmental impacts caused from global warming can be reduced because of less Co2 emission from burning fossil fuels.

According to Nori, the sheltering of split AC outdoor units has proven to increase their operational efficiency and reduction in electrical cost consumption.

In that regard, he encouraged members of SIRAC to apply sheltering of split AC by having shelter build for outdoor units that exposed to direct sunlight.

Additionally, he adds, by having split air conditioner as inverter type can further improve the energy efficiency over the normal conventional types.

On the type of refrigerant gases, members of SIRAC were told that R32 has the upper energy efficiency over the R22 and R410A and R32 uses less refrigerant with faster cooling capacity.

This means by using R32, there will be energy savings and less emission of of CO2 which means it has less impact on climate change.

News@SBMOnline2021