Hello everyone. Hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving today! I’m sitting at my desk writing this article while my wife is in the kitchen finishing up a pie and my girls are watching the Macy’s Parade. We’ve got the big meal planned for four this afternoon. Before I enjoy all of that pie and turkey I wanted to do a short article.
It was announced yesterday from the EPA that a series of settlements had been reached with seven different companies on R-717 Ammonia non-compliance. These settlements were split between seven companies in New England and totaled nearly six-hundred thousand dollars in fines and over seven-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars in compliance. Two of these settlements were issued after an ammonia leak had already occurred and the other five were taken as preventative measures. These inspections and fines from the EPA come as part of the EPA’s National Compliance Initiative on reducing chemical accidents.The actual EPA announcement can be found by clicking here, but it looks like these companies either did not have a proper risk management plan laid out or they missed submitting an annual notification to local authorities that their company was using Ammonia as a refrigerant.
Over the years of running RefrigerantHQ I’ve had mixed feelings on using Ammonia refrigerant. Yes, it is one of the most efficient refrigerants available today, it has zero Ozone depletion potential, and it has a Global Warming Potential of zero. It seems like the perfect choice for refrigerant applications. The catch is that it is rated as B2L by ASHRAE. So, R-717 is mildly flammable but the primary concern is the toxicity. If Ammonia is not handled correctly, or maintained correctly, tragedy can occur. Last year there were three fatalities that occurred due to an Ammonia leak at an ice rink up in Canada. Along with the deaths that occurred a large area around the ice rink had to be evacuated. It can be very dangerous.
All that being said, if handled correctly and maintained properly Ammonia refrigerant can save your business money by it’s efficiency and also ensure the longevity of your refrigerant systems as there are not any future plans to phase down R-717 due to it being so environmentally friendly. The responsibilities of maintenance and proper care of Ammonia systems should be left to the business owners but there are many who are negligent or who are just not aware of the dangers. This is where the EPA’s enforcement, fines, and compliance laws come into play. The problem is the EPA can’t do it all and there will be future leak incidents. The good news is that most of these Ammonia leaks are handled rather smoothly.
Ammonia will be here for quite a while and as the years pass by and the R-22 systems age and age we may find more and more business owners transitioning over to R-717 systems over newer HFC or HFO alternatives. Say what you want about Ammonia, it has definitely stood the test of time and will be around for many more decades to come.