Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Greenhouse gases from Refrigerants

I learned today about refrigerants, so the purpose of this blog is to introduce you--perhaps non global warming geeks--to what is a refrigerant, how it is used, and why it negatively impacts the environment.

Refrigerants sound exactly how the terms sounds. They are coolants typically used to in ACs. They  are ozone-depleting substances if they are released to the environment. Depleting the ozone layer allows more heat to enter our atmosphere and warm the Earth. Their global warming potential, a factor that signifies their impact to global warming, is a range from hundreds to 11,000. This means if carbon dioxide is a factor of 1 in terms of its impact to global warming, refrigerants (commonly known as HFCs and PFCs or CFCs) are upwards of 11,000 times stronger or worse for global warming. Today, I had a talk with my boss and my non-engineer background came out. I made a blooper in talking about refrigerants. I thought the amount of greenhouses from refrigerants came from our refrigerators not our ACs. I thought ACs have a greenhouse gas footprint primarily due to energy use. Cooling mechanisms in soda machines to ACs use refrigerants. Your car AC does as well. They are not dangerous to you, only dangerous to global warming if released.

What are the common uses of refrigerants? In a car, refrigerants are in your car AC. Air has to blow against the refrigerant, gets cooled, and then gets circulated.  Sources through wikipedia suggest that by 1992, it was illegal to release refrigerants in to atmosphere. No taking a halon, which is like a fire extinguisher, and just releasing it. EPA also has a wealth of information: http://www.epa.gov/ozone/title6/608/index.html 

Here's what a refrigerant looks like: picture

So why care? If you are doing greenhouse gas foot printing like me, why care? Well, it's nice not to walk up to a soda vending machine and not be ignorant that there could be a huge greenhouse gas source in there. Given that the most impactful refrigerants are now illegal, but the public talks carbon dioxide these days because it is so common. We forget about those less commonly heard greenhouse gases are far more powerful and right in our backdoor in our car AC.

No comments: