It has been more than two decades since the first refrigerant recovery unit came to the HVACR market and became part of the tool arsenal for service technicians. Over that time, two things have become clear: Even a repairable unit doesn’t last forever and the newest units are able to do far more than their predecessors.

Every year there was at least one unexplainable low-refrigerant service call, but when more than 10 occurred in 2009, executives at HVAC contractor Advanced Air and Refrigeration suspected more than phantom leaks. Professional thieves were the initial suspects. But the company soon determined the problem was due to huffing.

Ferris State University’s Commercial Refrigeration Laboratory has gone totally chlorine-free. By replacing the refrigerant HCFC-22 that was in two medium-temperature commercial refrigeration cases in the laboratory, the students in the associate degree program in HVACR can boast that the lab is now chlorine-free.

Recent developments related to refrigerant research are focusing on testing of a new HC refrigerant and growing acceptance of a method of destroying unwanted refrigerants. In the first, ComStar International is providing test results on its blended hydrocarbon 188C2. In the second, Midwest Refrigerants is reporting on its destruction technology.

History, they say, repeats itself. The HVACR industry is not immune to the truth of this saying. A good case in point was the introduction of R-410A earlier this century, compared to the introduction of R-22 in the 1930s.

Honeywell has announced that Bitzer has approved the use of HFC-407F (marketed by Honeywell as Genetron® Performax™ LT refrigerant in North America) as an HCFC-22 retrofit solution for medium-temperature systems, such as supermarket refrigerated cases.

Carrier Corp. recently filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), formalizing a request to reclassify a residential condensing unit as a subsystem of a system to extend the manufacturing prohibition to dry R-22 condensing units. The petition urges EPA to reconsider its current position and to issue a new rulemaking.

U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan sentenced Brendan Clery to 18 months in prison and ordered him to pay a $10,000 criminal fine and forfeit illegal proceeds in the amount of $935,240 for illegally importing R-22 refrigerant.

In the July 11 issue of The NEWS there was a Newsline story about the Environmental Protection Agency apparently conducting audits of contractors and wholesalers regarding their refrigerant record keeping.

U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan sentenced Brendan Clery, 34, to 18 months in prison and ordered him to pay a $10,000 criminal fine and forfeit illegal proceeds in the amount of $935,240.