Refrigerators Beyond Energy Star

Greener refrigerator set to enter U.S. market in 2011

By Leslie Tamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2010; A04

Greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide may not get as much global attention, but policymakers and business leaders view curbing these emissions as a way that nations can shrink their carbon footprints.

Refrigerators have a role in this story.

For decades, Americans have known only two types of household refrigerators: the pre-1996 fridge that uses an ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerant - commonly known by its trademark name, Freon - and the subsequent models that use the global-warming refrigerant called hydrofluorocarbon (HFC).

When CFCs float into the air, their chlorine molecules eat the ozone. HFCs may not harm the ozone, but they can hang in the atmosphere for decades, absorbing radiation that would otherwise be released into space.

A better refrigerant, environmentalists have argued since the early 1990s, is a hydrocarbon refrigerant.

Made of only carbons and hydrogens, these "natural" refrigerants do not degrade the ozone and are easily broken down by the sun. Compared with the atmosphere-degrading refrigerants currently used in American households, hydrocarbons contribute little to global warming.

As early as next year, Americans may have a new hydrocarbon refrigerator option that can reduce their global warming impact and their energy bills. U.S. manufacturers would be entering the HFC-free domestic refrigeration market that the Germans helped establish in 1993.

Back then, the United States was phasing out CFCs, and the chemical industry was introducing HFCs as a possible replacement. Greenpeace, the nonprofit advocacy group, was not happy with the "environmental alternative" to CFCs, said Amy Larkin, director of Greenpeace Solutions.

Although domestic refrigeration accounts for less than 2 percent of current global HFC consumption (automobile air conditioners emit the most HFCs), an HFC refrigerant's impact on the climate is 3,830 times more potent over a 20-year period than the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.

"But hydrocarbons weren't on anyone's radar," Larkin said, "and when we brought this to the government agencies, telling them these were a better, safe, efficient alternative, we were ridiculed."

Regardless, Greenpeace appealed to a small German manufacturer and helped engineer the world's first hydrocarbon domestic refrigerator. Within three weeks, Greenpeace pre-sold 70,000 HFC-free "Greenfreeze" refrigerators.

Since March 15, 1993, when the first Greenfreeze refrigerator debuted in Germany, more than 400 million hydrocarbon household units have been sold worldwide by several major manufacturers including Whirlpool, Haier and Sanyo.

HFC-free refrigerators have been sold in Mexico, South America, Cuba and parts of Africa, along with Japan, China and throughout Europe.

"Europe has produced incredibly safe, popular refrigerators, but there's still some suspicion in the U.S.," said Durwood Zaelke, director of the Secretariat of the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement.

Hydrocarbons are flammable, and there have been isolated incidents of exploding hydrocarbon refrigerators.

But manufacturers meet their country's standards and often have an independent safety organization evaluate their appliances. Although hydrocarbon units may have more robust components to prevent leaks, they do not differ much from HFC refrigerators. Typical refrigerators enclose the refrigerant in a hermetically sealed system away from anything that may spark, such as the refrigerator light.

Based on the track record of the hydrocarbon refrigerators, Zaelke said, it's unclear whether concerns about exploding refrigerators is "a true safety concern or just a clever argument for those who make chemicals. One would think they're relatively safe when there are millions sold in Europe."

General Electric plans to introduce the first hydrocarbon household refrigerator in the United States in June 2011, giving Americans a more environmentally friendly option, though at a hefty price.

Insulated with hydrocarbon foam and cooled by a hydrocarbon refrigerant called isobutane, the 30-inch HFC-free refrigerator would be part of GE's luxury Monogram brand, selling for about $6,000 to $6,500.

"You're making a significant investment, but this is all part of the gradual reduction in how much HFCs are used," said Merrell Grant, the general manager of GE Monogram.

Before these refrigerators can roll out to retailers, however, GE says it will wait for final approval from the Environmental Protection Agency's Significant New Alternatives Program.

SNAP, which regulates chemicals or technologies that replace ozone-depleting substances, ruled in 1994 that hydrocarbon refrigerants were too risky to be used in household refrigerators in the United States. According to an EPA spokesman, at the time there was not enough information about the hydrocarbon refrigerant's flammability potential, and there were other non-flammable refrigerants available.

After issuing a proposal in July 2010 to amend the SNAP rule, the EPA is expected to approve use of HFC-free refrigerants in domestic refrigerators next year.

"Hydrocarbons will slowly take over the market," said Stephen O. Andersen, former director of Strategic Climate Projects in the EPA's Climate Protection Partnership Division.

Hydrocarbons are already commonplace in many household appliances - gas stoves, water heaters, furnaces - and used in products such as bathroom cleaners, air fresheners and cooking sprays.

"Refrigerators are safe with hydrocarbons," Andersen said. "Come on, people will hold a blow dryer in one hand, and a can of aerosol hairspray in the other."

A handful of companies based in the United States have started using natural refrigerants in industrial food service equipment. Select Ben & Jerry's stores in Boston and the District received federal approval in 2008 to use hydrocarbon propane freezers as demonstration projects. Coca-Cola has also invested $60 million to advance HFC-free cooling globally.

At the recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, 400 international companies, including Unilever and Wal-Mart, pledged they would phase out HFCs from all industrial equipment by 2015. Said former EPA official Andersen: "I think if the market sees the tide changing and starts converting everything to hydrocarbons . . . it could make a big difference."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/26/AR2010122602479.html

Fuel In Places You Never Looked Before

Affordability Is Martek's Challenge As It Looks to Turn Algae Into Fuel
Columbia Company Working With BP

By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 20, 2009

Now that its flagship product is in nearly every container of infant formula sold in the United States, Martek Biosciences is looking to edge its way into the gas tank.

The Columbia firm, which develops nutritional supplements for food and beverages based on the fermentation of algae, announced this month that BP has agreed to invest $10 million over a 30-month period to fund research seeking ways to inexpensively develop vehicle fuel from organisms such as seaweed.

"We believe sugar to diesel technology has the potential to deliver economic, sustainable and scaleable biodiesel supplies," BP Biofuels chief executive Philip New said in a statement. "BP is very pleased to be entering this important partnership with Martek."

For BP, the Martek partnership represents just one of many investments to develop sustainable alternative energy forms. Since 2006, BP has announced investments of more than $1.5 billion in biofuel research, and other deep-pocketed energy giants are looking into this area as well. In July, Exxon said it would invest $600 million in a similar type of algae research.

If Martek's research yields an affordable product, there eventually could be a significant financial upside for Martek -- but that's a big if, experts say.

"This is a fairly small bet [by BP] on a fairly long-shot idea, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth doing," said Tim Ramey, an analyst with D.A. Davidson & Co. who follows Martek. Because of those long odds, Ramey dubs the BP investment as a bit of "wildcatting in the fermentation vessel."

In theory, Martek President David Abramson said this week, turning algae into the type of fuel BP could use isn't a remarkable accomplishment. The larger, more important trick would be to develop a product for a price that matches or beats the cost of fuels used by vehicles today.

"This is very doable in a lab, if you don't care about the price," he said.

If Martek develops a viable product, it would receive royalty payments from BP whenever that product was sold. Regardless of whether that happens, Martek will keep any research that may prove beneficial to its growing line of food and beverage products, under the terms of its deal with BP.

Martek's annual revenue was $352 million last year, nearly 90 percent of which came from sales to baby formula manufacturers. Using algae, Martek makes DHA, an omega 3 fatty acid that has been proven to be important for brain and eye development in babies. As the only company that makes what is regarded as a "clean" DHA product -- other manufacturers offer DHA in the form of fish oil derived from tuna and salmon -- Martek's product has cornered the U.S. market. Nearly all baby formula sold in this country contains DHA produced by Martek. Outside the United States, Martek's products can be found in nearly 50 percent of the market.

In the last three years, Martek has been expanding its DHA business by striking deals with food and beverage makers such as Coca-Cola, which is offering a new type of Minute Maid juice that claims to "help nourish your brain" thanks to Martek's DHA.

As recent studies have indicated DHA may have benefits for adults as well, Martek has sought to take advantage of a larger potential market, branding its product as "Life's DHA" with a logo that all of its new partners are required to include on their packaging materials. The company is hoping that the logo will stick in the minds of consumers in the same way that computer buyers once gravitated to machines that featured "Intel Inside."

Some of Martek's patents around DHA development are set to expire next year, however, and some analysts see Martek's BP deal as a way for the company move forward into possible new businesses should fresh competition emerge on the DHA front.

"They're trying to reinvent themselves with deals like this, knowing that their main business might be changing," Ramey said.

Abramson disputes that the company has anything to worry about, patent-wise. Some patents have already expired, he said, but the process of making DHA is tricky enough that his company doesn't fear competition will descend quickly.

In any case, Martek has a library containing thousands of species of algae stored in freezers at its Columbia facility. Algae can do more than just generate DHA, and it is possible that one of the thousands of species in its collection may contain the company's next big product.

Might it be diesel fuel? Bentley Offutt, principal analyst at Offutt Securities, said investors won't know for years whether the research money was well spent.

"Things in genetic engineering take a long, long time."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/20/AR2009082001792.html

Government Response To Bed Bugs

Biting back when the bedbugs bite

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 5, 2010; A3

The brown bugs, each about half the size of a pencil eraser, lie in glass petri dishes - a few on their backs, legs in the air. They died within seconds of scurrying across a piece of paper containing drops of a chemical.The next step is to find out whether that same piece of paper will kill insects that crawl over it two, three or four months from now.

This lab is the front line in the federal government's chemical warfare on a scourge that has become resistant to many insecticides and is raising anxiety - and welts - in bedrooms, college dorms and hotel suites across the country: bedbugs.

Among those leading the attack is Mark F. Feldlaufer, an entomologist at the Invasive Insect Biocontrol and Behavior Laboratory on the Agriculture Department's sprawling research center in suburban Maryland. His mission is to find compounds that kill the bloodsuckers, which have made such an itch-inducing comeback in recent years that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency issued a joint statement last month noting their "alarming resurgence."

A common household pest for centuries, bedbugs were virtually eradicated in the 1940s and '50s by the widespread use of DDT. That insecticide was banned in the 1970s, and the bugs developed resistance to chemicals that replaced it.

Unlike many other household pests - ants, termites and cockroaches - bedbugs can live for months without a meal, hidden deep in mattress seams, box springs and baseboard crevices, behind wallpaper and in clutter around beds, making it hard to spray them. And they travel easily, hitchhiking from person to person, apartment to apartment, city to city.

Getting rid of them, experts say, has become a complex political and social problem, not only because of modern concerns about pesticide use but also because of Americans' mobile lifestyle.

"People don't even have time to check their doggone phone messages," said Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, much less inspect mattresses for brown specks of feces, a telltale sign of an infestation. People also have more possessions, and all that clutter makes for great places for bugs to hide.

And rightly or wrongly, it is considered imprudent to spray insecticides in areas around the bedroom, he said. That means pest control companies are often unable to get rid of all the bugs at once. Return visits increase homeowner costs, and also risk increasing the bugs' resistance to insecticides.

Funding is limited for the kind of work the USDA's Feldlaufer is doing. Research on the public health effects of the bugs has not received much support because even though their bites can provoke allergic reactions, unlike ticks and mosquitoes they are not known to spread disease.

Nontoxic measures to fight the pests include encasing mattresses and box springs and washing clothes in hot water and running them in a dryer on high heat. But mattresses and couches can't be put in a dryer, and heat-treatment technology in apartment buildings is hugely expensive, experts said.

"It's the biggest pest problem we've encountered in several generations," said Bob Rosenberg, vice president of government affairs for the National Pest Management Association.

More bedbug complaints

In Baltimore, calls about bedbugs to the city's 311 line jumped from two in December 2008, when the city began tracking them in earnest, to 92 last month.

Washington is also seeing a big increase in calls to 311 and the health department, with the number this year - 257 - on pace to more than double last year's total, officials said.

Traditionally, complaints come from multi-unit dwellings, but the past three months have seen spikes from single-family homes and visitors who stayed in District hotels, they said.

In Ohio, infestations are so severe that Gov. Ted Strickland (D) made two appeals to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

"The bedbug problem has created a very real physical, emotional and economically devastating situation for many Ohioans," the governor wrote in a June 30 letter.

One Dayton apartment complex owner spent more than $280,000 in an attempt to destroy the pests, he noted.

Another hired an unlicensed pesticide applicator who saturated the inside of an apartment complex with a pesticide, resulting in tenants being treated at a hospital for chemical exposure.

Strickland would like Jackson to approve the use of an insecticide that is banned for residential purposes. The chemical, propoxur, is widely used to kill cockroaches and lawn pests.

Researching solutions

Although many insecticides are approved for use against bedbugs, the great majority contain pyrethroids, a class of chemicals against which the pests have developed rampant resistance, entomologist Potter said.

Potter's research has found propoxur, which belongs to a more toxic class of pesticides known as carbamates, to be effective because it does not rely on direct contact but remains potent on surfaces where bugs crawl even after it dries. The chemical had been approved for use against bedbugs since the 1960s. But manufacturers withdrew it from residential use in 2007 after the EPA found that indoor uses posed risks to children.

Pyrethroids and carbamates both disrupt bedbugs' nervous systems, but in different ways. University of Kentucky researchers have found that the bugs have developed resistance to pyrethroids in several ways, including breaking down the toxin with enzymes before it reached its targets.

An EPA official said the agency is evaluating more data to find out whether propoxur could be used in a more limited way than Ohio has requested.

The EPA, which held a bedbug summit last year, is now leading an interagency task force on the pests that includes the CDC, USDA, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Defense Department.

Seeking a fast fix

Until a month ago, Feldlaufer and other scientists at the USDA had been focusing on synthesizing new compounds to kill bedbugs. But even if a new chemical were effective, bringing it to market would take much longer because of safety testing. A faster solution would be to look at chemicals already used to treat agricultural pests, where safety data have been established, and determine whether those could be used to control bedbugs.

Hundreds of such pesticides exist. The EPA and USDA are working together to come up with a list for testing, ranked in order of those most likely to get a green light for indoor use, officials said.

But no new chemical would be a magic bullet. To fully eradicate the pests, there needs to be a coordinated approach that includes vacuuming, decluttering and sealing cracks to remove hiding places.

To raise public awareness about the bedbug problem, Baltimore officials have conducted door-to-door campaigns in affected neighborhoods. In the District, health officials put together a five-minute video about bedbugs that airs daily on Channel 16 and is also on the city government's Web site.

Feldlaufer hopes the new urgency will help him get more insecticide-resistant bugs to test. At his Beltsville lab, his 18 mason jars hold tens of thousands of bugs that feed on expired red blood cells (from Walter Reed Army Medical Center) that he mixes with plasma. But only two jars contain the pyrethroid-resistant ones.

His personal hope is to avoid getting bitten by the bugs ever again. He has become extremely allergic to them.

When he was a graduate student, he let dozens feed on his forearm while researching bedbugs. He developed a mild rash but didn't worry much about it. Fast-forward to two years ago, when as a longtime USDA entomologist he took up bedbug research again. He received a collection of the pests from a leading expert and decided to let them feed on his arm again.

This time, his arm swelled and reddish blisters bubbled up.

"Boom - after 10 seconds, I got that reaction, even though I had not been exposed in nearly 30 years," he said.

A photo of his blistered arm is featured in a USDA poster about bedbugs on the wall outside his lab. It's a personal reminder of his professional mission.

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090503688.html