Refrigerants

HVAC, Refrigerators and air conditioners are commonly used in numerous cities, households and automobiles. Refrigerators and air conditioners account for a large proportion of home appliance sales. The number of refrigerators and air conditioners in the world is a huge number. The reason why refrigerators and air conditioners can cool is because of the core key component, the compressor. The compressor uses refrigerant to transport heat energy during operation. The refrigerants have many types. Some conventional refrigerants used since long are damaging ozone layer friendly and impacting global warming. So, governments and organizations are regulating the uses of different refrigerants.

 

Montreal Protocol

Montreal Protocol is a global agreement to protect the Earth's ozone layer by phasing out the chemicals that deplete it. In 2007, The famous Decision XIX/6, taken in 2007, to adjust the Protocol to accelerate the phase out of Hydrochlorofluorocarbons or HCFCs. Current discussions on the Montreal Protocol potentially being amended to facilitate the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs.

 

GWP

Global Warming Potential, or GWP, is a measure of how destructive a climate pollutant is. The GWP of a gas refers to the total contribution to global warming resulting from the emission of one unit of that gas relative to one unit of the reference gas, CO2, which is assigned a value of 1. GWPs can also be used to define the impact greenhouse gases will have on global warming over different time periods or time horizons. These are usually 20 years, 100 years, and 500 years. A time horizon of 100 years is used by regulators. Here we use the time horizon of 100 years in the following chart.

 

ODP

Ozone Depletion Potential, or ODP, is a measure of how much damage a chemical can cause to the ozone layer compared with a similar mass of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11). CFC-11, with an ozone depleting potential of 1.0, is used as the base figure for measuring ozone depleting potential.

 

Atmospheric Lifetime

The atmospheric lifetime of a species measures the time required to restore equilibrium in the atmosphere following a sudden increase or decrease in concentration of the species in question in the atmosphere.

 

Here is a chart to show different refrigerants’ GWP, ODP and Atmospheric Lifetime.