The industry of refrigeration is nowadays facing a long period of transition pushed by international legislation, in particular EU regulation 517/2014, to achieve a lower environmental impact of cooling systems. The so-called F-gas regulation is thus defining for manufacturers and plant owners tough restrictions in terms of refrigerant global warming potential (GWP), i.e. the impact of any greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, determined as multiple of the impact of the same mass of carbon dioxide.

The main consequence of this regulation is the progressive phase-down of the traditional HFC refrigerants, that are being replaced by complex synthetic mixtures (in ma ...