Authoritative European body supports safety of HFO-1234yf in final report

March 10, 2014: Thierry Vanlancker, president, DuPont Chemicals & Fluoroproducts, said the following last week regarding the final report of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) on its review of testing of HFO-1234yf.

“DuPont is pleased with the final conclusions of the JRC, as they reinforce our high level of confidence that HFO-1234yf can be used safely in automotive air conditioning.

“The JRC met with a range of stakeholders and conducted three public meetings to obtain input on the extensive safety testing that has been conducted on HFO-1234yf for use as an automotive refrigerant. The JRC focused, in particular, on the study conducted by Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority, the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA).

“KBA had concluded that its testing, based on the requirements of German product safety law, produced no adequate evidence of a serious risk related to HFO-1234yf. The JRC report went further, saying that these tests provided ‘no evidence of a serious risk.’

“While the KBA had conducted additional tests under more extreme conditions, the JRC raised questions about the real-life relevance of the testing conditions. The JRC went on to say that it would not be appropriate to use the more extreme testing to draw conclusions regarding safety of the refrigerant.

“We note that multiple automotive industry groups, including the German Association of International Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (VDIK) representing 34 major car brands from all over the world and the SAE Cooperative research program comprising of 10 leading global automakers, have reached the same conclusion as the JRC that HFO-1234yf can be safely used in automotive air conditioning.

“A growing number of cars on the road today use HFO-1234yf. Automakers are using the refrigerant in cars sold in the European Union today, in compliance with the EU’s Mobile Air Conditioning (MAC) Directive. Several automakers also are using the refrigerant for cars sold in the United States to take advantage of credits that encourage the use of products with reduced climate impact. We expect to see other automakers move to adopt the product.

“DuPont is pleased to see that the European Commission is taking steps to ensure compliance with the MAC Directive and to ensure conformance with applicable type approval registration processes.”

The final report of the JRC can be found at Automotive Environment.