Greenhouse gas nightmare
Chemical refrigerants leak, harm atmosphere; problem spawns reclamation industry
PHILADELPHIA — When Jennifer Byrne, owner and technician at Comfy Heating and Cooling, gets a call to come and fix a relatively new air conditioning system, one of the first questions she asks is if the house has just been remodeled.
Here in West Philadelphia, Byrne has found shoddy renovations where installers skip steps such as pressure testing after installation. That can result in ice buildup and leaks of the chemicals that cool, called refrigerants.
“This problem is extremely frequent around here. Usually people tell you they bought a house that was flipped and all kinds of things are wrong, like the AC is freezing,” Byrne said, referring to the ice buildup.
“Trying to get it done as cheaply as possible,” she added, as she hauled equipment out of her truck.
It’s not a small matter. When refrigerants leak out like this, they are highly destructive to the Earth’s sensitive atmosphere. They’re “the most potent greenhouse gases known to modern science,” as one research paper put it, and they’re growing fast.
One of the most common ones, with the unfriendly name R-410A, is 2,088 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide, which comes from burning coal and gasoline. So an essential way that people are staying cool is making the world hotter and more unstable.
This is why the Clean Air Act prohibits the intentional release of most refrigerants. With the Environmental Protection Agency required to phase out one family of the chemicals 85% by 2036, the push is on to develop and spread cleaner alternatives.
Byrne’s truck is loaded with tools, canisters, hoses and special sealed cylinders, including an industry-pink one that holds the potent R-410A. When she works on a leaking AC unit, she drains the remaining refrigerant into one of the cylinders for safe storage while she takes things apart.
But these leaking AC units are just one way refrigerants seep into the atmosphere, measurably raising levels and contributing to increasing extreme weather.
Cars are another source of these super pollutants, says Eckhard Groll, an expert in refrigeration and head of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. AC systems in gas-powered vehicles are “prone to leaking” and on average 25% of refrigerant from all cars leaks out every year. With more than 200 million gasoline cars in the U.S. alone, Groll said that amounts to approximately 100 million pounds of refrigerant leaking out into the atmosphere each year.
Supermarkets are the second biggest source of leaks because they are large and extensive piping carries refrigerant to each cold display case. Danielle Wright, executive director of the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council, an advocacy group, said the average supermarket leaks 25% of its refrigerant each year, which agrees with an Environmental Protection Agency document from 2011.
The need to minimize refrigerant leaks has spurred a reuse and reclamation industry. One company is A-Gas Rapid Recovery, which has facilities in Dallas, Texas, Toledo, Ohio and Punta Gorda, Florida, among others.
Refrigerants can be used many times over and can last for 30 years, said Mike Armstrong, President of A-Gas in the Americas.