R600a Iso-Butane Refrigerant in GE Chest Freezers

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dylanmitchell

dylanmitchell

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Just got one of the GE garage-ready chest freezers that are designed for garage use. Flammable R-600a seems like a poor choice for something that will share space with open flame gas water heaters, gas dryers, or stoves. Both the 600a in my freezer and the R290 (propane) in newer fridges are very flammable. Do they odorize them like they do with propane cooking fuel? Reducing HFCs is a good goal but putting flammable gasses in your house is always a bad idea. There's a reason why we always store propane tanks outside.

Hard to keep up with changes in gasses, we upgraded to a 410a central air conditioner a few years ago and our cars use R134a. There's a list of potential replacements R-1234YF, R-290, R-450A, R-454B, R-513a, and R-600a. Reducing pollution is important but I'm opposed to flammable refrigerants. I can adapt to less efficient refrigerants replacements we have better technology and can use larger cooling units the good old R12 and R22.

View attachment dylanmitchell-2021062411364508537_1.jpg
 
Flammable gases as refrigerants

That debate has been done before.
Issues are very minimal.
Yes there is a risk, but that's true with everything.

Both are heavier than air, so they won't easily mix by themselves without interaction.
They'll just settle rather quickly. Not unlike a puddle of gasoline on the ground: it won't burn until it mixes with air.

Both have similar (though slightly different) ranges of explosiv mixtures with air: 1.5% to 10% by volume.
For R600, that is about 30g/m³ up to 230g/m³.

Knowing the approximate charges in these fridges/freezers, approximating the average ceiling height and going by gut I'd say anything over 75ft² should be safe.
Most appliances over here actually list how large a room has to be for a compressor system to be safely operated in it.

And again, that would first require the refrigerant to leak all at once which I never have seen in a household fridge tbh.
It's not impossible, just not common.
If it would be such a huge issue, the EU wouldn't have allowed for them to be used. CE-certification is quite stringent...

My mum had to order a new heat pump dryer on monday as the old one broke and that uses R290 aswell.
Not sure if mine is an R290 or R134a model, but it's sitting one room over in my bathroom.
No fear at all either way.
 
R600A fears....

...are understandable but unjustified.

 

People are always apprehensive of change; which is a good thing in most cases. However in this case, the risks are not as big as one might assume. 

Systems designed for R600A refrigerants have very small amounts of gas in them; and have electrical designs which keep electrical parts out of the compartment where gas could become trapped. 

Having worked on refrigeration for quite a while, I can't think of any incidents where a small fridge has suddenly and spontaneously leaked its entire charge all at once. They just don't fail that way. They fail by developing pinholes which lose the charge over a number of days, during which time any gas would dissipate. 

The exception to this is when people improperly defrost them, and puncture the sealed system with a sharp object. For this risk, the manufacturer explicitly warns not to do this; in the warning label shown in the original post. 

R600A units have been around for a while now and you just don't hear of incidents proven to be caused by the R600A leaking and igniting. You hear more incidents of electrical fires due to poor wiring than anything. Some compressor start relays caused quite a few fires in the past but those were R134A systems. 

 

These systems are probably going to last longer than R134A systems because they don't have the chemical breakdown of oil leading to cap tube clogging; which are problems of R134A / POE systems. 

 

The "garage ready" freezers and fridges aren't modified to mitigate any flammability concerns. That is just the manufacturer's way of saying that it can work normally in a wider range of ambient temperatures. In other words, it is not dependent upon being in an air conditioned or heated space. 

After all, garages are intended to store vehicles which have a tank of fuel in them. The fuel system is not sealed and contains 10's of pounds of flammable hydrocarbons which constantly emit some vapors. If a person is that concerned about flammable vapors in the garage, you need to re-think where you park your car or mower, or anything like that. 

 

Sincerely,

David
 
Funny how humans can be paranoid of things that really aren't a risk and be totally comfortable with things that are more so.

The car fuel tank is a great example. 20 gallons of gasoline holds more energy than 1000's of those freezers yet we don't bat an eye at the thought of that in the garage. You are more likely to have a vehicular fuel leak than a refrigerant leak also.
 
Hans, I don't think anyone has said that the possibility doesn't exist. But put it in perspective. A few units developed a problem out of millions sold. We all have things that are WAY more likely to get us.

I know if I lost sleep over this possibility, I know I could never again cross a street.
 
Kitchens exploding

Again, there is so much stuff in a kitchen that could cause this.
From people storing other stuff in their fridges to the point where many US kitchens have gas stoves...

I don't think I have seen a news story yet where it was conclusively shown the fridges charge was the source of explosion...
 
R600a Refrigerant Is very Flammable

But the risk is very low of having problems in your homes refrigerator.

 

A few thoughts

 

Only a small percentage of the refrigerant tubing in a modern refrigerator is copper, the evaporator is normally aluminum and about the same gauge or thickness as an aluminum beer can, the rest of the system is usually steel.

 

We do occasionally see a defrost heater short out and blow a hole in the aluminum evaporator if this happens with R600a it will guarantee at least an inconvenient and instant fire inside a mostly plastic freezer compartment. [ this failure is very rare, but we have seen it ] Also if a compressor terminal fails and blows out this will almost guarantee a fire [ also very rare but possible ]

 

90% of refrigerant leaks in modern refrigerators are in the aluminum evaporator tubing but are very slow and would pose no risk with R600a refrigerant.

 

Even though R600a may be heaver that air it will not just sit there on the garage floor if it leaks out because the slightest air movement will cause it to mix with sounding air and dissipate.

 

Overall R600a is probably a risk that is worth taking.

 

John L.
 
Henrik, I do remember reading about the Explode-O-Matic fridges on the news. There have been maybe 2 that I remember. In complete agreement with your assessment, I think the owners were storing something "unwise" in the fridge which led to these explosions. Either the material stored was illegal or the owner was too ashamed of the accident they caused to admit what they had been doing.

The main reason I don't think the published explosion stories in the news were R600A accidents is because those fridges were old enough that they would have been R134A anyway. 

But, in spite of all the engineering explanations and years of safe use of R600A systems, there will still be a few holdouts who continue to say...  
 

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