Home Articles What’s Behind The High Cost of R-22 Refrigerant

What’s Behind The High Cost of R-22 Refrigerant

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There’s something going on in the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) supply industry and it would do well for you to know if you want to keep the cost of running your HVAC system down.

The price of R22 refrigerants has been shooting up. Prices range from $45 to $175 per pound depending on who you’re getting it from. That’s just the price of the refrigerant. Just for comparison, an alternative refrigerant like R-410A Puron is about $4 a pound. So, why is the cost for R-22 Refrigerant shooting up?

It’s simply supply and demand. Since it’s harder to find R-22 in the market, the price has gone up steadily and it’ll all culminate on December 31, 2019, the very last day you are legally able to buy it. After that, you can use them but no one is allowed to make them or sell them.

What is R-22 Refrigerant?

R-22 is a refrigerant, a substance used for cooling in refrigeration. That includes refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners in homes, groceries, storage units, cars, trucks and ships.

R-22 is one of many other refrigerants. In fact, air and water are both refrigerants. However, R-22 and its variants are used instead for the more efficient characteristic that makes it ideal for industrial and commercial cooling whether to cool a bedroom, an office floor, a shopping mall or freezing of produce for storage or transport.

Just to give you a comparison, water boils at 212°F or 100°C. R22 boils at – 41.4°F or – 40.8°C. That’s right. R-22 easily gets to the boiling point, even at room temperature. And that characteristic of refrigerant requires very little energy and work to change its state between liquid and gas, enabling cooling possible.

That’s why R22 has been with us for decades since the invention of cooling machines such as for refrigeration and air conditioning. Today, R-22 is being replaced in the industry by R-410A, also known as Puron.

R-410A Puron is cheaper and becoming more available as a refrigerant. Newer models of HVAC systems are built using R-410A instead of R-22. R-410A Puron boils at – 55.4°F or – 48.5°C, even lower than R22.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t need R-22s. Older HVAC models, manufactured before 2010, were built with R-22s as refrigerants and these machines need to be maintained, making the most of equipment investments and spreading the cost further in time. However, the use and supply of R-22 in the industry have a deadline which has to do with why R-22s are becoming more expensive.

What Do You Need A Refrigerant For In An HVAC?

R-22 as a refrigerant is what goes through inside the tubing and coils of your HVAC, necessary in enabling the dynamics of heating and cooling that’s part of any HVAC system.

The refrigerant does not escape at any given time while in the tubing and coils. The substance simply moves from one part of the system to the next and back again in a loop. The process actually changes the state and dynamics of the refrigerant through the process where it actually switches between liquid and gas, between hot and cold.

Any cooling system will have four parts: the compressor, the condenser, the expansion valve and the evaporator. Let’s start with the compressor.

The compressor is responsible for compressing the refrigerant from a saturated low-pressure low-temperature state into a high pressure high-temperature superheated vapor. As the compressor piston opens, it sucks the low-pressure low-temperature refrigerant in. At the moment when the piston pushes back out, it compresses the refrigerant so that its molecules become heated. The dynamics are similar to using a bike pump. As you pump air through the tube, it heats up.

This high-pressure superheated refrigerant vapor then goes through the condenser coils. These are tubes that wound around for the heat to escape the further the vapor goes through it. At the same time, as the vapor cools, it turns back into liquid form. A fan at the condenser coil speeds up the process of cooling.

The condenser coil along with the heated refrigerant must be warmer than the surrounding air in order for the heat to dissipate. At the end of the condenser tubes, the refrigerant changes to a liquid but still at high pressure and slightly cooler.

The refrigerant then goes to the expansion valve where it is drastically cooled through the process of rapid depressurization. A typical Thermal Expansion Valve uses a bulb that controls the flow of the liquid refrigerant. The valve is like the spray nozzle. The relatively higher pressure refrigerant is allowed to go through the valve when the bulb opens. This opening up of the valve entering into a lower pressure evaporator allows depressurization to happen.

This is much like when you use an aerosol can. As you spray the content out, the can cools rapidly because of the rapid displacement inside the can lead to rapid depressurization. Rapid depressurization equals rapid cooling.

Sourcing R-22 refrigerant?

You can buy refrigerants like R-22 from middlemen or from refrigerant distributors. You’ll have to go around and look for a better price. Sourcing from refrigerant agents will mean you’ll have to shoulder for their profit margin. However, buying it straight from the distributors might mean buying more than you need.

R-22 Supply And Demand

It all boils down to economics. By January 1, 2020, no manufacturer can legally produce or sell R-22 refrigerant in the United States as promulgated by the EPA in accordance with the Montreal Protocol of which we are bound by law to follow.

The Montreal Protocol is a global response, especially among developed countries to stop producing, selling and using R-22 refrigerant as it has been found to eat away the Earth’s Ozone Layer in the poles, essential to protecting life from the ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

That means anyone making R-22 and selling it is doing so illegally. That’s why there’s been a steady phasing out of R-22 refrigerant from the market and anyone who needs to refill their older HVAC is finding it harder and more expensive to get it.

Operators of pre-2010 HVAC systems will certainly need to find a replacement of their cooling system. It’s not currently possible to use alternative refrigerants as R-22 systems are unique to its refrigerant. The cost will ultimately be too steep and replacing the whole system will be more economical.