Over time, a credible middle ground emerged. Any old black o-rings should be replaced with R134a-compliant green o-rings. the refrigerant even if the AC system is not damaged before any other damage to the car can be resprayed as the car has to then go into a low-bake oven which with a refrigerant which is flammable may be potentially dangerous. Hopefully I’ve properly conveyed that, if the A/C in your precious vintage car is long-dead, the question isn’t whether you choose between buying a few NOS cans of R12 and shooting them in (seriously don’t do that) or “converting” to R134a. This state-of-the-art Freon freezes like the North … For example, while R12 itself is similar to the halon used in fire extinguishers, when R12 is mixed with mineral oil—the most commonly-used lubricant oil in R12 systems—and aerosolized and burned, it creates phosgene gas, which was used as a chemical agent in WWI. But in order for refrigeration to work, you need something that has a low boiling point, something that exists as a gas at room temperature and can be easily pressurized into a liquid so that, when it is allowed to expand, it immediately boils at room temperature and cools. The problem is that some inexpensive available refrigerants—ammonia and propane, for example—are poisonous and/or flammable. If you are using some HCFC which are flameable and also CFC like R-22 then leakage may be destructive. EPA’s Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program reviews substitutes within a comparative risk framework in a variety of industrial sectors that historically used ozone-depleting substances. If an A/C system isn’t working, the root cause needs to be diagnosed, and the system needs to be fixed. You can recharge your A/C system with chicken soup (lousy refrigerant, by the way) and no black helicopters will come to your house, but in a world where people usually don’t hold onto their cars forever, R134a is still the best choice for retrofit applications. Pharmaceuticals industry use it as a propellant. The problem was that there was not agreement on exactly what was required for the conversion. So the oil must be compatible with the refrigerant. R600a is a flammable gas and has low Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) comparing to high GWP of R134a. Whenever a flammable refrigerant is placed in a vehicle air-conditioning system, affix a label in a prominent place in the engine bay to make it clear what refrigerant is used, and how much is used. Fortunately, AutoZone stocks the best A/C stop leaks for cars and trucks priced just right for any driver's budget. First things first. The advantage of ester oil is that it works with both R12 as well as R134a, so you can fill the system with it and then use either refrigerant. Now let’s talk about the rules of care: wash the radiator at least once every 3 months, because dirt and dust constantly settles on it, which significantly reduces the efficiency of the device. An explosion in a hotel in Victoria, Australia left two men dead in June of 2014. The manufacture and sale of the small cans of R12 used by hobbyists to “top off” a system also ended, although New Old Stock (NOS) cans of R12 are still privately traded on eBay and Craigslist (I’ll come back to that). Because A/C compressors have moving parts, they require oil. Which brings us to…. Certainly no one selling cans of R12 on Craigslist is asking for your EPA 609 card. 6BP 1 Safety group 2 3 LFL, kg/m 3 LFL, % 4 Auto ignition temp, OC PL, kg/m3 5 GWP EPA is authorized to assess fines of up to $37,500 per day for any violation of these regulations.”. Known by the chemical name chlorodifloromethane, it is a nontoxic and nonflammable material. In the automotive world, the replacement for R12 was tetrafluoroethane, a hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) branded as R134a. Yes, there’s a certain irony in the fact that we’ve gone full-circle from the invasive “you’ll need to replace almost everything including the compressor and hoses in order to properly convert R12 to R134a” to “you don’t need to replace all that much; just flush it, new oil, new drier and o-rings,” and back to “you’ll need to replace almost everything including the compressor, hoses, and the condenser.” But this change has occurred both because the cars are that much older than they were when the R12 to R134a change occurred in the mid-1990s, and there is now a better understanding of the need to take advantage of updated compressors and condensers in order to get the A/C systems to blow adequately cold with R134a. Now, in the case of big American cars, with their massively overbuilt A/C systems and huge condensers, R134a conversion often worked fine. 1. But many European cars, such as the vintage BMWs I love, had A/C systems that never functioned all that well even when they were new and charged up with R12. I will get further into this one bad test in the ‘history’ section in this post. You can get it and use it. The refrigerant in illegal disposable cylinders marked as R134a was also found to be flammable. Note also that, unlike mineral oil, both PAG oil and ester oil are hygroscopic—that is, they absorb water. Car AC Service and Repairs With this new technology and transition, it is important your service team are properly trained on how to service car AC systems with this particular refrigerant. Rasheed studied social sciences at Lahore University of Management Sciences. International manufacturing of new R12 ceased in 1996, but existing R12 can still be reclaimed and purified. Just like the R-12 refrigerant that was phased out of cars in the 1990s, it appears R-134a is on its way out, as well, in favor of the more environmentally friendly R-1234yf. However, it is generally stored in cylinders that maintain a constant level of pressure on the freon. Each has its own cult following and requires its own EPA-approved charging fittings. Nearly all of the historically used refrigerants were flammable, toxic, or both. Known facts are that R134a when mixed with lubricating oil and undergoing an explosive decompression (I E. Crash and puncture of a pipe, hose or condenser) is flammable, the refrigerant /oil mixture will ignite. I think that, with hindsight, many people would agree that, even given that R12 is an ozone-destroying agent, fines of this level made many hard-working A/C technicians hostile to the government, and thus were counterproductive. I was recently selling a beautiful 1987 BMW 325is with cold R12-based A/C. Following a tip off, Refcom alerted local trading standards officers, who … Very few DIY-ers have recovery equipment (I don’t), so you need to take the car to a shop that does, and fewer and fewer shops keep and maintain R12-recovery equipment. “No one here will work on it,” he said. But other than these, no flammable refrigerant should ever be used in a car or light truck A/C system. Sustainable automotive air conditioning is the subject of a debate – nicknamed the Cool War – about the next-generation refrigerant in car air conditioning.The Alliance for CO 2 Solutions supports the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO 2) as a refrigerant in passenger cars, and the chemical industry is developing new chemical blends.. R1234yf (SolsticeTM yf) has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) under the limit set by the EU’s Mobile Air Conditioning (MAC) Directive and is the next generation refrigerant for automotive air conditioning. R1234yf (SolsticeTM yf) is a HFO used as a replacement for R134a in automotive air conditioning. On a long-dormant system, the odds are very high that it’s dead because it has no refrigerant in it, which means it has leaked out… which means there’s a leak that must be located and fixed. The shards of a bursting cylinder pose a serious hazard. It exists in gas form when expose to the environment as the boiling temperature is -14.9°F or -26.1°C. There are other EPA-approved refrigerants such as “Hot Shot” and “Freeze 12,” which you can find here. Of course, the receiver/drier needs to be replaced, as it does any time an A/C system is opened. However, the operating pressures are reportedly four times those of other refrigerants, so retrofit appears out of the question. The US EPA SNAP laws tend not to permit using flammable refrigerants in cars. Unfortunately, taking the longer view of things, even if you do leak-test a car thoroughly and properly all A/C systems leak eventually, so any can of R12 you put into a car will likely wind up in the atmosphere, an eventuality that I am less and less comfortable with.