We’re super excited to announce that we’ve validated the performance ratings for R-449A and R-448A condensers in Enterprise, our coil selection software. We believe the condenser coil performance model we’ve developed is the most comprehensive and accurate of its kinds in the industry.

We wanted to use this post to briefly explain our testing methodology to our users. We’ll also touch on why performance modeling for these refrigerants has been challenging in the past, and how we plan to improve our model over time.

In a refrigeration circuit, the evaporator coil plays a critical role. Part of its responsibility is creating the controlled pressure drop necessary for the refrigerant to change phase, the bulk of which occurs via the system’s metering device, such as a thermostatic expansion valve (TXV).

Around 2010, the first refrigeration systems operating on transcritical CO2 began cropping up in North American supermarkets. Since then, usage of transcritical CO2 systems has grown steadily and they’ve become viable options for places like supermarkets, food warehouses, and ice rinks, as more organizations move away from traditional HFC refrigerants. Natural refrigerant market accelerator Shecco estimates that transcritical CO2 systems grew from 140 in 2008 (all in Europe) to more than 35,000 systems worldwide today.

There are dozens of commercially available refrigerant options on the market today, including numerous refrigerant blends, which aim to replicate the effectiveness of former workhorses like R22, the production of which was made illegal as of January of this year. Two popular examples of refrigerants developed in the last 30 years or so that are used in the HVAC industry are R-410A and R-407C. These two refrigerants are often used for similar applications, but they have some marked differences that should be understood and considered when deciding between them.