Refrigerant being phased out> CFCs threaten Earth’s ozone

For decades refrigerants like freon have helped to keep us cool in the summer and keep our food fresh year round. Now, the rush to replace and reclaim these environmentally harmful chemicals is heating up.

The widely used chlorofluorocarbons that brought the world out of the ice-age of refrigeration and are used in refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners are now considered a threat to the earth’s ozone. In most of the world, production of CFCs, like DuPont’s freon, will end this year, a move that has spawned burgeoning businesses in alternative refrigerants as well legal and illegal trade of the CFCs.

Closer to home, the ban that prohibits production but not use of CFCs has raised concerns among Maine businesses from mills to motels. Should their cooling systems go down and require a new charge of coolant, these businesses may have to foot the bill for costly replacement systems or retrofit their older equipment.

To the average consumer, the issue may be a simpler decision of whether to buy a new refrigerator without the CFCs or sticking with the older models and praying CFC supplies are sufficient to outlast the fridge. Experts say it will probably be more economical to buy a new refrigerator than it would to replenish the CFCs in an old model.

On Thursday in Bangor, representatives of small businesses and school districts learned about what options exist for people with the CFC refrigerants. Other refrigerants, called HCFCs, which are used primarily in residential and commerical air conditioners, are considered less harmful to the ozone and won’t be phased out until year 2020.

The Maine Small Business Development Center has sponsored 14 workshops on CFCs from York to Madawaska. The center estimates that 8,000 Maine businesses, from grocers to florists, make use of coolers, freezers and refrigerators as part of their regular operations. Refrigeration also plays a big part in the state’s tourism industry.

“You can’t find any business that caters to the tourism business that doesn’t, in one way or another, depend on refrigeration,” said Jerry Tudan, a refrigeration consultant who spent 14 years working on cooling systems at Bath Iron Works, the state’s largest consumer of CFCs.

Speaking at the Holiday Inn in Bangor, Tudan urged business owners to assess the condition of their refrigeration systems right away and develop maintenance and replacement plans for their systems.

Despite this immediacy, Tudan urged some caution when selecting CFC replacements and warned the 30 people in attendance that some alternatives being offered amounted to snake oil and were potentially dangerous. In Florida, for example, one man sold flammable propane gas as a cheap alternative to the CFCs used in automobiles. And other alternatives, called blends, can be more volatile than freon or its replacements, said Tudan, who is vice president of the national Refrigeration Service Engineers Society. Some blends include elements such as combustible butane, he explained.

In developing replacement plans, Tudan said businesses could opt to install completely new systems using newly developed alternative refrigerants or choose to retrofit their older systems. A less expensive but shorter-term option for businesses would be to maintain current CFC-based coolers or freezers.

But with production of CFCs being curtailed at the end of this year, Tudan said supplies of CFCs will shrink and price increases will be a potential problem for some businesses. Restaurants or supermarkets could lose expensive and perishable food supplies waiting for emergency recharging of the CFCs.

Tudan estimated that supplies of the CFCs will only last a few years, although he acknowledged that currently there are still large quantities available, including black market suppliers who dump tons of CFCs in the United States.

Shiploads of the chemicals, including from Russia, enter the United States regularly, he said, circumnavigating the stiff excise tax imposed by the federal government.

President of Peregrine Technologies, an energy and refrigeration management company, Tudan said that earlier this year he had been offered the chance to buy a boatload of CFCs for $2 a pound, about a fifth of the normal price of the refrigerants.

“I wouldn’t have touched that with a fork,” he said.

Not everyone thinks that the changeover to the newer refrigerants will be that rapid. Ken Winter, who is an owner of RRR, a refrigeration and reclamation company in Bangor, is banking on a decade’s worth of business from CFCs.

His company takes unwanted CFCs from refrigerators and cooling systems, cleans it and then resells it as reclaimed coolant. He said not everyone can afford the new systems and with proper care current coolers and refrigerators can last a long time, creating a demand for the CFCs. As for his supply of the CFCs, Winter said those businesses that do make the change to the new refrigerants will be disposing of their old CFCs, which can be reclaimed and reused.

Winter said he has an advantage over companies trying to stockpile the unreclaimed or “virgin” CFCs and cash in on expected higher prices later. In an effort to curtail CFC use and stockpiling, the federal government has imposed a $5.35 per pound exise tax and an annual $1 per pound fee for the unreclaimed CFCs. Winter doesn’t have to pay these fees.