GETTING BY WITHOUT CFA's

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Finally, a California company, Quantum Optics, is developing a vacuum-insulation technology in which monolithic silica aerogel—an unusual solid that is 80 to 90% air—is injected into sealed panels, and a soft vacuum drawn. Like the powder vacuum, this can insulate far better than the best CFC-based insulation materials. Silica aerogel and hard-vacuum panel technologies are not as close to commercialization as the softvacuum powder technology.

Until new refrigeration and insulation technologies can be developed and brought to market, refrigerator manufacturers are caught in a bind. A new-appliance efficiency bill was signed into law in 1987 that mandates higher efficiency standards in 1990 and again in 1993. When the law passed, refrigerator manufacturers thought they would be able to meet the higher efficiency requirements in part by using larger quantities of CFCs. Without increasing their CFC use, they will still be able to meet the 1990 standards, but the industry is lobbying hard to prevent still higher efficiency standards from going into effect in 1993. The industry supports the gradual phaseout of CFCs but wants to delay new energy-efficiency standards.

One observer remarked sardonically that if the refrigerator industry had been running the Manhattan Project during World War II, we might still be a nuclear-free world. The same argument could be turned around to suggest that because ozone depletion and global warming problems are so great, they warrant a huge national research effort addressing energy efficiency and CFC alternatives-one on the scale of the project that resulted in the atomic bomb.

Auto air conditioners are the single largest source of CFC release into the atmosphere.

Auto Air-Conditioning

Auto air conditioners account for about a quarter of the total CFCs pumped into the atmosphere each year in the United States. Eighty percent of new cars in this country come with air conditioners, and the compressor required for a midsize American car is equivalent in capacity to the one required for whole-house cooling in Atlanta, Georgia! Rapid cool-down calls for such a workhorse. Once the car's interior is cool, the system is way oversized.

Auto air conditioners use CFC-12 exclusively, as they have since the mid-50s. HCFC-22 was used for a while in some cars, but the required compressor has to operate under higher pressure, which demands heavier components. Because less weight is so desirable in cars, CFC-12 won out as the refrigerant of choice.

Manufacturers are anxiously awaiting the availability of HCFC-134a, but that is still several years away, assuming successful toxicity and durability testing. In the meantime, a tremendous reduction in CFC-12 venting to the atmosphere is possible by servicing air-conditioning systems at facilities that can reclaim the old CFC rather than simply letting it evaporate. With conventional practices, servicing and charging air conditioners release 20 to 25% of the CFC-12 into the air. Equipment to capture and reclaim CFC during servicing is just being certified by national testing labs and should begin appearing in service stations very soon. If your auto air conditioner needs servicing, ask the service station personnel if they have such equipment. If they don't, try to find a station that does. "This is the single largest opportunity for consumers to make a difference," says Steve Andersen, who heads much of the CFC work at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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