For years copper has been an essential material when it comes to manufacturing air conditioning and refrigeration systems. While the industry is comfortable with the use of copper tubing in these systems, there are some fairly significant considerations. More and more people are coming around to the idea that they will not be able to use copper tubing forever. Alternatives are being sought and perhaps the most viable of these is aluminium tubing. The biggest issues surrounding the use of copper are very clearly connected. They revolve around price and availability. As availability goes down, of course as you would expect price goes up. There is a limited supply of copper remaining on earth, and the demand has skyrocketed over the last few years. The vast growth of Chinese industry means that demand in the country is huge. Many people suggest that this demand has led to the Chinese hoarding copper supplies to protect their future interests and inflating the price of the metal by doing this.
As the price of copper increases, so too does the cost of copper pipes. Eventually it almost reaches a point where it is no longer economically viable to use copper piping in air conditioning and refrigeration systems. Of course we are seeing plenty of examples of the impact of the price of copper in society at large. It seems like barely a day goes by without more news of copper thefts leading to power cuts and delays on public transport. Just as often we seem to hear of another thief who has been electrocuted in the act of stealing copper.
So why can aluminium be suggested as a suitable alternative? Well, perhaps most importantly of all aluminium is one of the most abundant metals found on earth. There is no risk of us running out of aluminium in the foreseeable future. In the same way as scarcity of copper leads to price increases, the abundance of aluminium means that it is much cheaper.
Of course no one would advocate using aluminium tubing unless it was in its own right a highly suitable material for use in HVAC/R. Aluminium is strong, but is also much lighter than copper. This makes it much easier to work with. It is also very flexible which means it can be used more creatively in air conditioning systems, and is far less likely to break which being bent.
