I saw this news story come across my e-mail this morning and needless to say, I was surprised. It’s not everyday you see that Chemours and Arkema partnering up with one another. In fact, in the recent past they have been fairly bitter rivals going back and forth in HFC court battles. Arkema was one … Read more
For those of you who do not know, I am originally from Michigan. While I haven’t lived there for twenty or more years the state has always had a fond place in my heart. My extended family still live up there and I occasionally visit. It only makes sense for me to be a Red … Read more
Good morning folks and welcome to RefrigerantHQ! As I write this article it’s a nice cold March Sunday morning. Things haven’t begun to warm up yet for the upcoming refrigerant season but everyone knows that it is just around the corner. In fact April is really the beginning. It is the point where we begin … Read more
Here’s something that a lot of us just don’t think about. Believe it or not our grocery stores and supermarkets that we visit once a week or so are some of the most energy intensive commercial buildings in the country. Why is that you may ask? Well folks it all boils down to refrigeration. (No … Read more
Opteon and Solstice refrigerants are brand names of a new line of refrigerants known as Hydrofluoroolefins. These refrigerants are very similar to their sister classification known as Hydroflurocarbons. Much like HFCs HFO refrigerants are comprised of Hydrogen, Fluorine, and Carbon. Chemically, the only difference here between HFCs and HFOs is that HFOs are unsaturated meaning … Read more
R-1234yf, or HFO-1234yf is soon to be one of the most popular refrigerants in the world. Making it’s debut in the early 2000’s it has quickly rose to power and will soon be the dominant refrigerant in the automotive industry. Today, as I write this in October of 2017 there are approximately thirty-five million cars … Read more
Most of you in the automotive industry have already heard of the new HFO 1234YF refrigerant. Depending on where you are in the world you may have already come across 1234YF vehicles during service appointments. If you haven’t heard of it or seen it by now I can assure you that it is coming. As … Read more
As I am sure that all of you know when it comes to manufacturing refrigerant there are only a few players left in town. Sure there are some smaller companies scattered here and there across the country but for the most part when you are buying refrigerant it is coming from one of two companies: … Read more
Well folks one of the big dogs in the refrigerated transport market, Carrier Transicold, has begun offering R-452A as an alternative refrigerant for their trucks here in America. Most everyone already saw this coming due to their competition, Thermo King, had already begun switching their trucks over to 452A as well. For those of you … Read more
The race is on to find suitable alternatives to R-404A. In 2009 the Honeywell corporation invented a new refrigerant called Genetron Performax (R-407F). This new refrigerant is an HFC blend containing forty percent of R-134a, thirty percent of R-125, and thirty percent of R-32. The thinking behind this refrigerant was to come up with a … Read more
Rather you like it or not folks R-410A will be going away and it’s going to be happening a lot sooner than everyone thinks. In 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency announced that they will beginning the initial steps of phasing out R-404A in July of 2016, January 2017, and 2018. Along with that they also … Read more
Hello ladies and gentlemen! It’s that time of year again. The cold wind is blowing, the snow is falling, and the temperature barely gets over twenty degrees across half of the nation. Instead of thinking about the cold I’m thinking about the summer. What will the heat be like next summer? How bad will it … Read more
Over the past few years I have done numerous posts concerning the true cost per pound of R-22, R-410A, and R-134a. Each one of these posts have had outstanding success including the one I just published only a few days ago. Throughout these articles I have yet to mention the refrigerant that is slowly picking … Read more
While there still hasn’t been a formal amendment added to the Montreal Protocol to phase out HFC refrigerants across the world there are many countries that are taking pro-active steps to phase out HFC refrigerants such as R-410A, R-404A, and R-134a. The United States announced phase-out measures that they would be taking in the summer of 2015. The … Read more
In case you were wondering HFO refrigerants are the refrigerants of the future. The commonly used HFCs of today are already slowly being phased out across the world and are being replaced with either the Chemours Opteon brand or the Honeywell Solstice branded HFO alternatives. The first and most popular HFO refrigerant that most of … Read more
There has been a big push over the past couple years to replace R-404A and other HFC refrigerants with alternatives. The push comes from HFCs having a larger Global Warming Potential, or GWP. GWP is compared against Carbon Dioxide which has a GWP of 1. R-404A has a GWP of 3,943. Obviously, there is quite the difference … Read more
Well folks it looks like the automotive refrigerant market is going to be split into two. Today, most everybody is still using R-134a as the main refrigerant for automotive applications. If you have been working on newer cars you may have seen some vehicles with the HFO 1234YF systems. R-134a is being phased out across … Read more
I came across this link today from DuPont’s website and thought I would share. It provides a fact sheet on DuPont’s newly announced Opteon brand for automotive applications. This is the new HFO 1234YF refrigerant that has a very low Global Warming Potential. As it stands today 1234YF will be the refrigerant of the future … Read more
Before I can answer that question there is the need to point out that there are a variety of different classes of refrigerants that are on the market today throughout the world. I will be going over the top three classes at this point in time. One thing to note is that yes, refrigerants do … Read more
HFO refrigerants, or Hydrofluro-Olefins, are a new class of refrigerants that have a much lessened global warming potential than it’s HFC alternatives. One example being the 134a alternative, 1234YF, which is 335 times lower on the global warming potential scale and only four times higher than standard carbon dioxide. HFOs are the refrigerant of the … Read more