First Greenfreeze Climate-Safe Freezer Launches in the United States
Ice cream lovers of the United States, rejoice. Greenpeace and Ben & Jerry’s have teamed up to bring the first climate-safe ice cream freezer to the USA. The Greenfreeze refrigerator eliminates the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), an extremely potent greenhouse gas that has 1,400 times the global warming impact of CO2.
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Greenfreeze technology has been around since 1992 and is installed in over 300 million refrigerators worldwide. But it wasn’t allowed into the United States until earlier this year when the Environmental Protection Agency gave Ben & Jerry’s the go-ahead to test 2,000 Greenfreeze units.
HFCs and other fluorinated gases are the most dangerous greenhouse gases that you’ve probably never heard of. Together, they are responsible for 17 percent of global warming pollution in the atmosphere.
It’s sad that the USA has had to wait 16 years to receive such a widely-used technology, especially since Greenfreeze refrigerators make up 40 percent of all refrigerators produced worldwide each year. But with the US on board, perhaps that number will jump even higher.
@Uncle B
I can’t figure out what you are saying. I am unaware of any “solid state” or thermoelectric fridges because limitations of the Peltier materials used. They are much less efficient than vapor-compression based refrigeration, and the temperature difference between the hot and cold side is only about 40dF which is frequently insufficient for refrigerator temperatures.
I think you may be thinking of absorption based refrigeration which doesn’t use electricity, but the heat of combustion of a hydrocarbon, or through solar collection. These refrigerators are reliable, more efficient than thermoelectric, but not as efficient as vapor-compression, and solar ones lose their cooling when the sun goes down. The Ben & Jerry’s freezer though, is a traditional vapor-compression cycle freezer with hydrocarbon refrigerant.
As these fridges get older, more and more cases of fridge explosions are occurring throughout Europe.