Prof. Dr. Sherif Fakhry Mohamed Abdel-Nabi, President of the Egyptian Russian University, announced that the university campus hosted the first steps of the project to transform commercial air conditioning companies in “Egypt” from manufacturing devices using hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) to replacing them with air conditioners that operate with direct and indirect evaporation systems. He pointed out that hosting this project came with the support of Dr. Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, Chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees.

In the same context, Prof. Dr. Khaled Al-Zahabi, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the HBRC, explained that the project is sponsored by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. He added that the project includes a group of major Egyptian companies specialized in the manufacture of air conditioners. Also, the second phase of the project is currently being implemented, which aims to reduce the use of HFCs and replace them with air conditioners that operate on the theory of direct and indirect evaporation.

On the same subject, Prof. Dr. Alaa El-Batsh, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the Egyptian-Russian University, added that the university provided a space for the project’s tests as well as the necessary equipment, such as “energy and water” sources. This is in addition to hosting the entire team working on the project that will contribute to saving energy and preserving the environment from harm caused by conventional air conditioning.

For his part, Dr. Sayed Shebl, Director of the Research Institute for Electromechanical Works in the HBRC and head of the project team, revealed that the idea of ​​the project is based on comparing the performance of Freon-powered air conditioners and devices that operate with direct and indirect evaporation systems in terms of “the cooling efficiency, the amount of energy consumed, the amount of water consumed, and the cost of operation over the lifetime of the device.” He explained that Prof. Dr. Mohamed Alaa Alma is the project consultant, and that the work team supervising testing the devices for the companies participating in the project over two consecutive weeks showed impressive results, and air conditioning devices that work with direct and indirect evaporation systems outperformed conventional devices.

It is worth noting that the preliminary results of the project proved that the air conditioners that work with the theory of direct and indirect evaporation achieve:

• High cooling efficiency.
• Energy conservation.
• Reduced emissions compared to conventional air conditioners that affect the phenomenon of global warming and the erosion of ozone layers.

These preliminary results are a promising start toward the transformation of the air conditioning industry in “Egypt” and represent the beginning of the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which stipulated a gradual timeline to reduce the use of HFCs by 70% by 2025.