ARLINGTON, Va. — According to the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute (ARI), building owners in the United States last year replaced or converted 2,594 comfort cooling chillers that use CFCs, leaving an estimated 38,000 of the units that still rely on CFCs, which were banned from production in the United States due to concerns about depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer.
A survey of chiller manufacturers released annually by ARI stated that there were 379 chiller conversions and 2,215 chillers replaced with non-CFC equipment using alternative refrigerants last year. According to ARI, this pace was slower than that in recent years, revealing the impact of the weak U.S. economy in 2002.