Fluorochemicals

Overview  |  Refrigerants  |  Foams Solvents & Aerosols

Fluorochemicals Research serves the refrigerant and air-conditioning industries as well as insulative foam, solvent, and aerosol applications.  Arkema’s Chlorofluorochemicals (CFCs) helped establish airconditioning, refrigeration and effective foam insulation as essentials of modern life.

Following the implementation of the Montreal protocol to phase out ozone depleting chemicals such as CFCs, Arkema introduced hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFCs) and later hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) as zero ozone depleting alternatives.

Arkema is a leading worldwide supplier of hydrofluorocarbons (HCFCs and HFCs) used in air-conditioning, refrigeration and foam applications. However, some HFCs have relatively high global warming potential (GWP) and are coming under closer scrutiny due to the increasing concern over global climate change. The focus now is the search for the next generation of environmentally sustainable working fluids with negligible direct environmental impact in terms of both ozone depletion and global warming potential.

Development of low GWP options must be balanced with respect to safety, performance and energy efficiency. Indeed, greenhouse gas emissions come not only from direct emissions but also largely from indirect sources based on energy consumption. It is therefore important when striving to implement low GWP solutions that we not cause the unintended consequence of increasing greenhouse gas emissions by utilizing less efficient technologies, which degrades the overall LCCP (life cycle climate performance).

Hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs), such as HFO- 1234yf (2,3,3,3-tetrafluoropropene), offer many of the benefits of HFCs but with the added benefit of very low GWP. This comes from the extremely short atmospheric lifetimes of these compounds resulting from their olefinic structure. As such, HFOs are attractive next-generation solutions offering excellent environmental profile and performance.

To address future needs, Arkema is developing low GWP fluids to offer safe and efficient options for next generation refrigerants and blowing agents for insulating foams.

As with our other businesses, the fluorochemcials applications research group continues to develop new formulations that provide safe and efficient products, which are low GWP while eliminating the ozone depleting chemicals used in these applications today.

Fluorochemicals also serve as non-flammable, non-toxic solvents in such critical applications as cleaning electronic parts, and manufacturing medical syringes and catheters, as well as aerosol propellants in asthma inhalers.

Arkema continues to support the refrigerants, foam-blowing agents, solvents and aerosols businesses with research teams and pilot facilities in Pierre-Benite, France, and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. These teams consist of organic and inorganic chemists, process engineers, systems engineers and application scientists. The researchers:

• Develop and improve both gas and liquid phase fluorination processes
• Develop novel catalysts for fluorination reactions
• Develop next generation high efficiency low global warming fluorochemicals
• Utilize modeling and characterization techniques in the development of new refrigerant and foam insulation fluorochemicals
• Develop methods of using these materials in a variety of applications
• Identify new applications and materials for the industries we serve

In addition to taking advantage of internal resources, Arkema encourages its scientists to seek out and work in conjunction with other scientists in both industrial and academic settings world-wide.

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