Each year the DOE petitions Congress with a “Congressional Budget Request” to continue financing the projects that show promise and are deemed worth pursuing. What has the DOE been up to in the name of renewable energy and HVAC technology?
In anticipation of a greater reliance on reclamation, those providing such reclaim services have been looking at ways to serve contractor customers faster and more efficiently. An example is the announcement from Airgas Refrigerants Inc. of what it calls “a new approach and new technology for its reclamation business.”
Added to the Compute-A-Charge® brand is a wireless RF scale. With accuracy of 0.05 percent of reading, it is calibrated to strict NIST Standards at the factory. Compatible with high pressure R-410A, the unit is temperature-compensated over the entire operating temperature range to maintain charging accuracy.
A major concern in our industry today is the careless promotion of hydrocarbons, or hydrocarbon-based blends, as drop-in refrigerants. Even though HC’s do have many positive attributes, in their pure state they are classified A3, and therefore if misapplied can be very dangerous to use.
ICOR International has developed Tech Tools, a mobile application that will supply refrigerant knowledge and resources for anyone that carries an iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod touch®.
A recent wave of published reports focuses on new ways to monitor HCFCs during their phaseout period, HFCs in terms of their long-term potential, and how Canada is dealing with the disposal of unwanted refrigerants.
As the number and diversity of refrigerant products on the market continues to grow, the occurrence of refrigerant mixing or contamination becomes more likely. In many cases, the contamination of recovered refrigerant is avoidable if a few best practices are followed during service and recovery.
DuPont Refrigerants announced on June 11 that it had completed a five-year effort to achieve the shutdown of a suspected trader of counterfeit refrigerants in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). In a statement, the company said the trader’s activities were linked to gases found in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
On June 1, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the release of its draft Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) health assessment for ammonia. The draft assessment was available for public comment for 60 days and will be sent for independent expert peer review.
Now that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved the use of three hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants in some smaller appliance applications, advocates of HCs are continuing to promote use in larger equipment, with commercial ice machines as well as reach-in/walk-in freezers and coolers possibly next in line.
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