Climate-friendly cooling

The refrigerants of the future

Many processes in the pharmaceutical industry are in a state of change due to political regulations regarding climate change. Refrigeration is particularly affected, as conventional technologies are becoming more and more restricted. For plants with lifetimes of more than 30 years, the focus is on future-proofing and the quality of the plants. Freeze-drying plants depend on stable and available refrigerants. Our claim is not to compromise on safety and plant performance and to make freeze drying processes as environmentally friendly as possible.

For refrigerants, conventional technologies are mostly based on F-gases, which today account for 1.5 percent of the total warming potential. By 2050, this is expected to increase to 6 to 9 percent of the total greenhouse gas unless action is taken.

Natural refrigerants have no or minimal global warming potential and no ozone depletion potential. Unlike man-made refrigerants such as CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs, natural refrigerants are substances that occur naturally. They are part of natural biogeochemical cycles and do not form permanent residues in the atmosphere, water or biosphere and are also more cost-effective.

As a result, we are committed to counteracting the growing climate impact and reducing climate-damaging refrigerants to 21 percent by 2030. That is why Optima has been successfully using refrigerants with relatively low global warming potential in freeze drying systems for some time and offers solutions with natural refrigerants and nitrogen cooling. Natural refrigerants are not only suitable for freeze-drying systems – Optima also relies on efficient refrigeration with natural refrigerants for the generation of cooling water for commissioning and the Factory Acceptance Test.
Our customers also benefit from the environmentally friendly and future-proof solutions we use in our plants. One project to realise this goal is freeze-drying plants for our customer CSL, which use the natural refrigerants ethane and propene. Our plants thus comply with the current directives – and retrofitting is no longer necessary over the entire service life of the plant.