Frequently Asked Question

Refrigerators using a natural refrigerant have been introduced on the market. Can't you do the same with your air conditioners?

Adapting such commercial materials for general residential use is difficult, as no technology exists to ensure their safe use.

All CFC-free refrigerators on the market use hydro-carbon refrigerant called isobutene, which is not suitable refrigerant for air-conditioners. A possible alternative would be propane, which is also a hydro-carbon refrigerant. Although propane has a capacity similar to that of hydro chlorofluorocarbon (HCFC22) refrigerant, it is highly combustible and presents an explosion hazard. Safety is a serious issue that must be solved before such refrigerants can be considered for use in air conditioners. Residential air conditioners require about 10 times the refrigerant used by refrigerators; while explosion risk is considered to increases proportional to 3~4th power of refrigerant amount. Therefore, the explosion risk presented by an air conditioner charged with such a refrigerant is assumed to be 1,000 to 10,000 times that of a similarly charged refrigerator. What's more, air conditioners require the installation of on-site piping, and no fault free technology has yet been established to ensure the safety of this procedure when an explosive refrigerant is used. These circumstances make it difficult to adapt propane as a refrigerant for residential applications.