It may be hard to believe, but it has been more than a decade since government regulations first required the industry to perform procedures that quickly became known as recovery, recycling, and reclaim. These procedures are still required. In the early days, the terms often got confused. Many interchanged the words, to the point that the three distinct processes actually seemed one process, called “recoveryrecyclingreclamation.”
It never hurts to brush up on the definitions of these terms, and many manufacturers provide definitions in their technical publications. For example, DuPont includes the most up-to-date information concerning the terms in the company’s “Suva Refrigerants Technical Reference Manual.”