Quantifying environmental performance improvements of a refrigerant recycling system compared to the conventional one in railway industry

초록

In accordance with the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocols, the railway industry is currently evaluating the environmental performance and reducing the environmental impact of refrigerants used in air-conditioning systems. Since a rail vehicle uses a variety of refrigerants, and besides consumes large amounts of them to operate its air-conditioning systems, recycling refrigerant gases (containing CFCs and/or HCFCs) and preventing gas leakage into the atmosphere are major issues facing the railway industry. Currently in Korea, however, used refrigerants are disposed without any processing for recycling. Thus, the objective of this paper is to propose a proper recycling (recovery) system of used refrigerants to minimize the environmental impact caused by them for rail vehicles. It also aims at quantifying environmental performance improvements of the proposed system compared to the conventional one, using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).