Refrigeration with ammonia

Ammonia is widely used as a refrigerant in industrial systems for food refrigeration, distribution warehousing and process cooling. It has more recently been proposed for use in applications such as water chilling for air-conditioning systems but has not yet received widespread acceptance in this field. This review paper assesses the reasons why ammonia is so popular in industrial systems, the reasons why it is deemed less suitable for other applications and the possible benefits at local, national and international levels that might be gained by more general acceptance of ammonia as a refrigerant. The paper also considers other possible applications which might benefit from the use of ammonia as refrigerant. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.