What’s Going on with R-22 – History

This will be the first of a 3 part blog series on R-22 or what most people refer to as Freon. Freon is actually a brand name for a family of chemicals. It’s just like when you call a tissue a Kleenex. Freon is a DuPont name for what we in the HVAC industry call refrigerant. There are a number of different refrigerants for numerous applications.

The one that we want to pay particular attention to is refrigerant 22 or R-22. This is the refrigerant that home air conditioners have used since they began to be mass producted in the mid-1900s.

In the 1980s, there was reseach that concluded that a hole was developing in the ozone layer of the Earth. Left unattended, the hole could potentially grow worse and in time allow harmful radiation to enter the atmosphere causing changes in weather patters, etc. Some of this was eventually labeled “Global Warming”.

No matter where your politics or theories lie, in 1989, a multinational treaty called the Montreal Protocol was put into law. Part of the treaty discussed the phase out of certain chemicals that could potentially damage the ozone layer. Refrigerants as a family were top on the list. The treaty set a schedule for the elimination of refrigerants. R-22 is on the list, but not at the top. R-12, which was used in cars and appliances was top on the list and has been completely eliminated for some time now.

This set the air conditioning manufacturers on a journey to find a replacement. After a number of years, R-410a was established as a suitable replacement for R-22. While R-410a is still a refrigerant, it is inert with respect to the ozone. Along with this refrigerant change, our industry as a whole has changed how we handle refrigerant. To explain that is a bit more than the scope of this blog.

The bottom line though is that by 2020, all R-22 production will stop and only recycled material will be available after that. From 2004 until 2020, the EPA regulates the production capacity of R-22. It is set to decline each year. Please note the graph on this page. For a detailed article directly from the EPA, please click here.

Next time we will look at the shake-up that occured early this year and what it may mean for 2012.