What are refrigerants used in?

Refrigerants play a vital role in everyday life. Here’s how they are used to advance the lives of many around the world. 

What are refrigerants?

A refrigerant is a manufactured compound that can go through a repeated life cycle of gas and liquid in a cooling or heating system. They are entirely man made and created from raw materials. Koura mines and creates its own Klea® refrigerants, which it supplies to top manufacturers around the world to be used in products for the likes of Mitsubishi, Ford, and LG. 

While many believe that refrigerants are gases that are put into refrigerators, they have a much wider range of applications such as refrigeration, automotive and air conditioning units. 

How are they used? 

There are many uses for refrigerants to improve the movement and storage of people and products. 

Refrigeration

The key use of refrigerants is in the cold storage of food and medicine. Keeping these essentials cool while they are being transported avoids spoilage and offsets any unnecessary waste.

The cold chain ensures this through refrigerated trucks and warehouses while the items are in transit until they reach the end user. With refrigeration or freezing, food is preserved for weeks, or months compared to days at room temperature. 

Medicine is expensive and some types must be stored at very specific temperatures, and refrigerants play a big role in ensuring this. Temperature controlled environments ensure that the air stays just right, as a few degrees could be the difference between a medicine having the ability to save a life, or be completely unusable. 

Automotive

As Klea® refrigerants are used in over 20 million new vehicles each year, we understand the importance of air movement in vehicles. 

Millions of people spend hours in their car every day for commuting and travelling, meaning that the air they breathe inside a vehicle needs to be fresh. As a vehicle is essentially a small box, it’s important to keep fresh air flowing, and to ensure the environment isn’t too hot or cold for basic comfort levels. 

Buildings

As the global population grows, so does the trend for creating taller, smarter buildings. Although this has allowed the world to become greener, it has increased the need for fresh air flow throughout the buildings. 

Air movement systems allow fresh, cool air to travel through large buildings to ensure its occupants are constantly receiving a fresh, clean oxygen supply. A window would not be adequate for this as the buildings are so large, which is why unitary systems have become commonplace in new builds. 

Klea® refrigerants

To ensure higher energy efficiency and a lower impact on the environment, Koura has developed a range of low GWP Klea® refrigerants that can be used across a variety of applications. The future proof products will ensure that Koura Klea®, and our customers, adhere to current regulations for a long time to come while ensuring a high quality of use for manufacturers. 

Find out more about our industry-changing range of development refrigerants.