Australia boasts one of the longest-running product stewardship schemes for refrigerants in the world. Refrigerant Reclaim Australia CEO Michael Bennett spoke to CCN about the history of the program and its continued success.
Established in 1993, the industry-funded scheme is managed by Refrigerant Reclaim Australia (RRA). The not-for-profit body takes back and destroys used and unwanted ozone depleting and synthetic greenhouse gas refrigerants.
2012 is set to become a record breaking year for the RRA (see chart one) with the level of refrigerant currently being recovered likely to break the April 2011 monthly high of 73 tonnes. Bennett says the average is about 50 tonnes per month, which translates to 600 tonnes a year.
Bennett says the program is back on track after a serious decline as a result of the global financial crisis. “Through 2009 and 2010, the amount of refrigerant being sent to us declined markedly after strong growth right up to 2008,” he says.
“There has been a visible turnaround since early 2011 and the growth path has resumed.”
Referring to chart five, which shows the annual rate of refrigerant recovered, Bennett says the inclusion of HFCs contributed to the program’s growth in the 2003/04 and 2004/05 financial years.
He says the subsequent strong growth to 2008 was due to changes to the Ozone Act which made product stewardship compulsory. Until the new laws were passed, RRA was a voluntary organisation and contractors undertook recovery as a good practice.
“The new legislation expanded the Ozone Act to include synthetic greenhouse gases such as HFCs, and also introduced licensing, trading authorisations, and compliance audits,” he says.
Total results
Since its establishment in 1993, the RRA has collected 4383 tonnes of waste refrigerant.
This figure is impressive by global standards but Bennett is quick to point out that it is the whole industry that should be proud of this result.
“Every day contractors and technicians all over the country are recovering refrigerant from air conditioners, motor vehicles, vending machines, and from equipment in pubs, supermarkets and corner stores,” he says.
“Most recovery operations yield less than a kilogram of refrigerant so to get one tonne tradespeople may have conducted around 1000 recovery operations.
“To get back more than 500 tonnes this year alone takes a great amount of work by skilled and dedicated people.”
Early days
In the very early days, some of the recovered refrigerant went to local manufacturers for use as feedstock, Bennett says.
“In the late 1990s we also reclaimed some refrigerant, mostly R12, at the request of industry. These days we leave reclamation to commercial operators.
“Since then, all the refrigerant we have collected has been destroyed, or is stored awaiting destruction. We use the argon plasma-arc process, originally developed by the CSIRO and SRL Plasma, to destroy recovered refrigerant.
“This process utilises extremely high temperatures to break down the fluorocarbon molecule to acid gases which are quenched and neutralised with an aqueous solution of caustic soda.
“This results in the formation of sodium salts and water. There are a number of processes employed around the world to destroy recovered refrigerant but the plasma-arc technology is the only one currently available in Australia.”
CHART five
Chart five provides a breakdown of the types of refrigerant collected in the past eight years.
“We take back CFCs and HCFCs, which are ozone depleting refrigerants, and HFCs that are synthetic greenhouse gases,” he says.
“HCFCs, predominately R22, account for just over half of all product collected. HFCs have grown rapidly in importance since we expanded the program to take them back, and now provide about 40 per cent of total recovery.”
While the volume of CFCs has been diminishing in recent years, Bennett says the amount collected is “pretty remarkable” considering there have been no new CFCs manufactured or imported since 1995.
“Here we are 17 years later and they are still being recovered and sent to us,” he says.
CHART SIX
The program was first established in response to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Since then Bennett estimates the recovery program has prevented the destruction of more than nine million tonnes of stratospheric ozone.
Originally, the RRA was taking back CFCs, the refrigerants with the greatest potential for depleting ozone.
“It is the chlorine in CFC refrigerants that does the greatest damage,” he says. “CFCs are very stable molecules and when emitted they remain in the atmosphere for a long time.
“When they get high in the atmosphere they break down and the chlorine then combines with ozone, a relatively unstable molecule made up of three oxygen atoms.
“That probably wouldn’t be so bad if the reaction only occurred once. Unfortunately, the reaction occurs many thousands of times so that one kilogram of R12 may be responsible for the destruction of 10 tonnes or more of stratospheric ozone.”
In 2003, the program expanded to include synthetic greenhouse gas refrigerants that contribute to global warming.
When it comes to assessing how much global warming abatement the program has achieved, Bennett estimates CO2e abatement of more than 12 million tonnes.
“When you consider that R12 has the equivalent global warming potential of a bit more than 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide, it is easy to see the benefit.”
Chart six shows the contribution to abatement of the three main types of refrigerant.
“The increase in abatement achieved by taking back and destroying HFCs can be clearly seen,” Bennett says.
In 2004, HFCs accounted for 14 per cent of abatement and through increased recovery provided 37 per cent of abatement in 2011.
HCFCs, almost all R22, provided 41 per cent of abatement with CFCs contributing 22 per cent.
Asked about the introduction of the carbon tax on July 1, Bennett expects it to have a dramatic impact on the overall price of refrigerants.
He estimates R134a will increase by more than $30 a kilogram and R404A will go up by more than $80 a kilogram.
“It will make refrigerant a very valuable commodity; this kind of distortion is sure to generate a lot of unforeseen and surprising change,” Bennett says.
“Some things we can predict, for example, contractors will increase the level of reuse of recovered refrigerant.
“At the moment contractors reuse much of the refrigerant they recover. This makes good sense for a range of reasons. If the refrigerant they recover is contaminated or unusable for some reason they send to us. That’s what RRA is for, to take back and destroy unusable and waste refrigerant.”
However, the massive price rise will increase the level of reuse, he believes.
“When you can charge out refrigerant for $100 or more per kilogram you have to reuse as much as possible. The danger is the potential for contamination of systems and the consequent fall in system performance, increase in breakdowns, and higher maintenance costs.
“It is going to be very important for contractors to undertake proper testing of recovered refrigerant before reuse.”
Bennett also expects the level of reclamation to increase. Reclamation is a process that returns recovered refrigerant to new specifications, usually the use of a fractional distillation column.
Bennett believes the increased price of refrigerants will make reclamation an attractive proposition, but reclamation plant costs are considerable and interested companies may wait to see if the carbon tax survives the next next election.
“There is also a danger that hydrocarbons will be installed in equipment not designed for flammable refrigerant,” he says. “Hydrocarbons have been used as refrigerants for many years but should only be used in systems specifically designed for them due to their flammable and explosive nature.
“Of course, there is also the potential for cheap counterfeit refrigerant such as the R40/R22/R142b mixture to start appearing in systems.”
This very dangerous mixture has been found in refrigerated containers and some products manufactured in China.
Bennett believes a higher reuse rate and the growth of reclamation will reduce the amount of refrigerant sent to RRA next year.
“If the carbon tax remains in place then the amount may diminish further in subsequent years but there will be large quantities of contaminated, unusable and waste ozone depleting and synthetic greenhouse gas refrigerants being sent to us for many years,” he says.
“There is about 40,000 tonnes of refrigerant installed in the Australian market place and we’re very happy to able to take it all back, over time. Just don’t send it all at once.”