The other day, my college-age daughter asked me about some of the subjects I’ve covered for The NEWS, and the terms ODP and GWP came up. She hadn’t heard of them, so I offered a brief explanation. That wasn’t good enough for my little engineering major, as she wanted to know exactly how the numbers were calculated. I had absolutely no idea, but I said I would find out. So here goes (and remember, I’m not a scientist).
When I first started writing about the HVACR industry more than 25 years ago, the term used to describe the harmful effects of refrigerant emissions in the atmosphere was ODP. After scientists discovered the hole in the ozone layer, they determined that it was caused by the chlorine in chemical compounds like CFCs, which were widely used in aerosols and refrigerants. They needed a measurement to describe the amount of ozone depletion caused by various substances, thus the term ODP was born.