Suddenly I see...
Clipboards, tinnitus and scrappy play
Hey Folks,
I remember it very clearly, the day I came across the scrappy bit of paper. It was covered with oily fingerprints, stuck to an old clipboard, and hanging next to the refrigeration compressor rack in the back of a large supermarket.
It was also noisy there. The high-pitched whine of the compressors in the ears. It would inevitably kick-off the tinnitus, the ringing result of naively standing too close to the speakers at the overly loud gigs of my younger years.
Numbers
The clipboard contained a hand-written record of all the refrigerant top-ups that had been carried out over time by the refrigeration contractor. Not an uncommon document, but one that I hadn’t paid much attention to previously.
At the time, I was doing energy efficiency and analytics work for a large food retailer in SE Asia. Most of the effort going into delivering energy savings for retrofits and new stores. This is going back almost a decade now, well before net-zero was a popular thing. I’d like to think the client’s motivation was environment but pretty sure it was dollars.
Looking at refrigerant use wasn’t part of our scope of work, but I was curious. I ran the emissions numbers back at the office. I then did a double take. I’d seen the problem that I’ve not been able to unsee ever since. That piece of paper responsible for many an hour of lost sleep.
The problem was, the top-ups represented the refrigerant lost to atmosphere from leaks in the refrigeration system over those preceding years. The refrigerant was R404A, common in retailers and with a global warming potential (GWP) almost 4000 times greater than CO2. The amount leaked, and then re-filled over the course of the year, had greater greenhouse emissions than ALL the fossil energy used in powering the same site. In fact, it was higher than the energy emissions from even their largest site.
The system was being replaced as part of a retrofit, part of the reason for my involvement. However, from the records, it was clear the problem had been going on for some time. At the next management review, I raised the issue. Flagging that there were likely other systems out there in the portfolio with similar leak problems and subsequent high emissions. I was kindly thanked for my concern and told they would keep it in mind. I stopped working with them not long after.
For those that see refrigerant emissions for the first time, it is a real eye-opener. And for me, once the opportunity presented itself, I took the path to focus purely on refrigerants and fluorinated gases as a result.
Aside to the emissions problem, leaks often lead to more energy use. Leaks contribute to more wear and maintenance. They lead to lost cooling capacity not to mention safety issues for staff. Even in a low-GWP and natural refrigerant world, leaks still need attention. Close to zero is still not zero.
There are plenty of bits of paper out there, with seemingly innocuous numbers, in compressor rooms all over the place. There are also some without any records at all. Aside to getting maintenance records written down, it helps to get those numbers elevated, to get them visible, so the leaks can be repaired. Into a simple spreadsheet or even better still, centralised inventory tracking software. The leak-rates and emissions then become clear as day. The unseen now seen.
There is plenty that can be done around leak mitigation, advanced detection and contractor accountability. All topics I’ll re-visit down the road, including the role of technology and data.
In the meantime there are some good leak resources from the IOR REAL Zero and NASRC leak reduction initiatives and I’d urge you to check them out.
The more people that see the problem the better.
Where the f-gas hides
Each week we provide an example of where f-gas ‘hides’. Either where it exists in equipment or used as feedstock to produce other materials. Stick around – some are surprising!
My son and I like to play football (soccer), hence I get an excuse to watch a bit of the world cup, much to the dismay of my wife. I’m also conscious of the broader issues involved and I thought this piece on oil-ball nails one of the points well.
There must have been a particularly dull passage of play, where I found myself thinking, what to put in this week’s newsletter.
As f-gases have their fingerprints all around us, I just happened to be staring at another example. My LCD TV screen.
I’m not referring to plasma TVs here with their xenon and neon gases. It is not so much where gas is hiding, but f-gases are very common in the manufacture of electronics. Not just TVs and tablets, but anything that uses semiconductors. Which is a lot of things these days.
F-gases have been used for decades, predominantly in two areas of the manufacturing process. Both are complex. So, for simplicity, one is ‘etching’ the intricate patterns into the semiconductor layers (think chemical reactions to dissolve the miniscule pathways) and the other is in cleaning. The process leaves residue which needs to be cleaned up, and the fluorine found in f-gases is commonly used as the ‘broom’.
As you might have guessed, not all the f-gas gets utilized in the process, and some makes it out to atmosphere where it contributes as a greenhouse gas…
Various f-gases are used, the ones people may recognise are the reportable PFCs, NF3 and SF6, which as I’ve mentioned previously, has the highest warming potential of all the f-gases.
Abatement (capture) systems are being put in place. Some facilities are shifting to creating fluorine onsite directly. Recent reports however suggest there is still plenty to do, especially with little industry transparency.
There are a few other rabbit holes to dive down here including the role of fluoropolymers (made with f-gases) used in the TV cabling and circuit boards. I’ll keep that for another day however…
In the meantime, for all the folks that mention they don’t have any f-gas emissions in their supply chain for emissions reporting. You’re likely reading this text on one such example.
Right, well done to the Socceroos on getting this far and ‘till next time.
Adrian
p.s. as always bonus points for those that identify the artist, album or track in the title and the tenuous link. Last week’s song title was from an underrated Australian band - Underground Lovers and their 1997 album with the same name
Fixed stuff here for newcomers
There is lots of news every week from the cooling industry and plenty of newsletters that cover it well. The intention is to keep this newsletter focussed on refrigerants, the most prominent of the f-gases, and importantly their environmental impact. That’s the lane I’ve chosen - I’ll do my best to stick to it.
Why any of this matters:
Emissions from f-gases and refrigerants have been the fastest growing greenhouse gas over the decade (yes more than CO2 and methane - check out IPCC WG3 summary for policy makers). They are also classed as super pollutants given their outsized global warming impact over the coming decades.
You can find my basic primer here and a plenty more detail in the whitepaper here
Reminder to those in management and doing reporting: If you’re not including refrigerant emissions in your inventories or sustainability reports – you should be. Feel free to reach out if you need a hand.
Some useful permalinks
The scale of the climate challenge can often feel daunting. This piece helps me take a step back and understand where we need to focus first - recommend a read.
There are plenty of technology solutions available to address the cooling and refrigerant challenge. You can find many of them here
Beware when the same people who have contributed to the current f-gas problem propose you new refrigerant solutions… This is a good place to get up to speed.