How a hospital in Costa Rica now cools its medicines and vaccines in a climate-friendly way
The National Children's Hospital (Hospital Nacional de Niños) is one of the most important public hospitals in Costa Rica. It specialises in the care of children and paediatric care in all areas, including psychological and psychiatric. In order to be able to care for its little patients even better, the German Government has now donated a walk-in cold room to the hospital. What's special about it? The cold room is operated with the refrigerant propane (R290), which has particularly good energy efficiency properties and is environmentally friendly. Most standard cold rooms operate on synthetic refrigerants, which have an enormously high greenhouse potential.
For example, the commonly used synthetic refrigerant R404A is 3,922 times more harmful to the environment than CO2 when released into the atmosphere. The natural refrigerant propane, on the other hand, has a GWP > 3.