Environmental Effects
R-22 is often used as an alternative to the highly ozone-depleting CFC-11 and CFC-12, because of its relatively low ozone depletion potential of 0.055, among the lowest for chlorine-containing haloalkanes. However, even this lower ozone depletion potential is no longer considered acceptable.
As an additional environmental concern, R-22 is a powerful greenhouse gas with a global warming potential that is 1810 (which indicates 1810 times as powerful as carbon dioxide). Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are often substituted for R-22 because of their lower ODP, but these refrigerants also have high global warming potential. R-410A, for example, is often substituted, but has a GWP of 1725. Other substitute refrigerants are available with low GWP. Propane (R-290), for example, has a GWP of 3, although it is rarely used in refrigeration systems because of its flammability and potential for explosion.
Read more about this topic: Chlorodifluoromethane
Famous quotes containing the word effects:
“Virtues are not emotions. Emotions are movements of appetite, virtues dispositions of appetite towards movement. Moreover emotions can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable; whereas virtues dispose us only to good. Emotions arise in the appetite and are brought into conformity with reason; virtues are effects of reason achieving themselves in reasonable movements of the appetites. Balanced emotions are virtue’s effect, not its substance.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)