Why Is It Important To Recover Refrigerant?

There are 3 main reasons it’s important for refrigerant to be recovered.

1.)    It is Required by law

2.)    It is Economical

3.)    It is Environmentally sound

This is not something that just started taking place.  In fact, refrigerant has been saved and reused for years.  There is an increasing awareness taking place of the economical benefits of recovering refrigerant.  This is mainly due to the availability and rising costs.

The limited use of chlorine based refrigerants was brought on by the Clean Air Act of 1990.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) goes over some regulations for getting rid of specific commonly used refrigerants:

1)      There should be no venting of refrigerants into the air

2)      In order to purchase or handle refrigerants, certification is required

3)      Equipment used for recovering refrigerant must be certified

4)      It is required to repair substantial leaks and practice safe disposal of product

Chlorine based refrigerants cause a tremendous amount of harm to the ozone.  Recovering and recycling the refrigerant forces us to clean the refrigerant before reusing it.  This not only saves us from damaging the atmosphere even more, but adds many years to the life of the equipment.  During the recycling process of the refrigerant, harmful contaminants are removed making the refrigerant safe to use again.