A-Gas Leads the Way on Lifecycle Refrigerant Management

A‑Gas has reported a record year for refrigerant recovery and reclamation activity.

Adding together all the used gas that its teams have recovered, reclaimed or destroyed across the globe during 2022, can be expressed as the equivalent of taking 1.8 million vehicles off the road for a year or planting 123 million trees – a significant increase on the A-Gas numbers for 2021 – making it the company’s best year.

The overall carbon abatement number for last year was 8,617,743 tCO2e, up more than 1.1 million tons of CO2e when compared to the 2021 figure. Across a 12-month period this is an impressive 15 per cent increase.

A-Gas Group Sustainability and Regulatory Director Ken Logan said: “This is a great achievement. We have invested consistently in innovative technologies to enable our global teams to obtain used refrigerant from the market to process for future re-use or destruction. The result of this is that we have successfully captured thousands of tons of refrigerant that may otherwise have found its way into the atmosphere.

“By safely recovering, reclaiming or repurposing the product that is already out there we are embracing the principles of the circular economy. By adopting the opposite to the take, make and dispose business model we are making better use of what we already have, avoiding the need to produce the equivalent quantity of virgin refrigerants and, at the same time, making sure that these gases are not vented or leaked into the atmosphere. Every time product is recovered the circular cycle repeats.”

Even when there is no re-use potential, particularly prevalent for CFCs, safely recovering and returning these refrigerants for safe destruction remains vitally important. The A-Gas team across the globe will support users, regulators or enforcement agencies with the complete process leading to the destruction of CFCs. Using United Nations approved, TEAP-certified A-Gas PyroPlas technology, A-Gas delivers the industry’s highest guaranteed and proven destruction efficiency at a minimum of 99.9999 per cent.

A-Gas recently announced the development of an enhanced version of PyroPlas to deal effectively with halons, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and mixtures of all previous generations of used refrigerant, as well as an increase in the prevalence of flammables.

The recovery and reclamation of existing gases is a key pillar of lifecycle refrigerant management. It is clear that reducing leakage and recovering refrigerants for future re-use, or destruction, combined with moving to lower global warming products will have the greatest beneficial impact on our climate.

Refrigerant sent to A-Gas reprocessing centres becomes fully certified reclaimed product and where possible is returned to the market for re-use. Ken Logan added: “Around the world, no kilogram of refrigerant once produced should be allowed to go to the atmosphere. As an industry we need to do all we can to achieve this ambitious goal.”

Highlighting the A-Gas commitment to the lifecycle management of refrigerants on a global scale is the company’s expansion into New Zealand. The newly-established A-Gas New Zealand facility located in South Auckland has the capability to process and clean recovered refrigerant from the local market. Used refrigerant sent to the facility will undergo chemical analysis at the onsite laboratory and will be reclaimed to meet the AHRI 700 standard.

This multi-million dollar investment by A-Gas will ultimately provide the New Zealand market with state-of-the-art gas separation technology, along with high-speed refrigerant recovery, a unique reclaim cylinder exchange service and on-site laboratory and analytical services.