POMPANO BEACH, Fla. – Oct. 12, 2009 – Dometic Marine today announced all of its Cruisair and Marine Air products are now fully compliant with the environmental mandates set forth by the Montreal Protocol.
The company has now converted all of its products from R22, which is classed as an ozone-depleting substance, to alternative refrigerants that meet the international standards. The conversion from R22 was completed ahead of the 2010 deadline for compliance.
“We are committed to minimizing the environmental impact of our products through regular assessment of energy and material demands, emissions, waste generation and recyclable resources,” said Frank Marciano, president of Dometic Marine. “Since the early 90s we have been at the forefront of developing products that use alternative refrigerants, starting with R134A, R404A and R409A. We have been using R407C and R417A for the last few years, and now R410A, all of which are compliant with the new mandates.”
Marciano noted that Dometic is using three environmentally safe refrigerants to replace R22 because the variety of products they offered to customers cannot be built today using only one refrigerant.
For reengineered and new product designs, Dometic favors R410A because of its impressive thermodynamic properties.
For 2010, Dometic is introducing an entirely new line of reengineered split systems called the Emerald Series, designed from the ground up to run on R410A. In addition, the Turbo Series of self-contained units has been converted to R410A, as well as all of the other Cruisair and Marine Air chilled water systems.
“Optimizing for R410A required a redesign of our whole refrigerant system,” added Marciano. “Every part of the system had to be reevaluated – from the compressors and evaporators to the condenser coils to the entire manufacturing process.”
The physical properties of R407C are similar to R22 and are being utilized in some of the chiller products. R417A is also similar and can serve as a drop-in replacement so no reengineering is required. It is currently being used in some of Dometic’s direct expansion systems.