What a problem with the coolant in cars!

The problem in Latin America with the handling of refrigerants from vehicular air conditioners seems not to be mitigated, and even worse, it is projected as the greatest challenge for the signatory governments of the Kyoto protocol, a document in which the signatory countries decided to reduce the emission of HFCs into the atmosphere by at least 5% before 2012. The task is not easy to achieve and much less to guarantee, since informality in the sector will be quite difficult to persuade.

According to ARAP data, only 30% of greenhouse gases are related to refrigerants such as HFC 134ª, which is currently the most used in vehicular AC; however, these would be 30% less gases released into the atmosphere if they were handled with good practices, that is, the proper process of recovery and recycling of the refrigerant was carried out.

For the maintenance of vehicular air conditioning there is a procedure known as recovery and recycling of the refrigerant, where the gas is extracted -recovered- to do the necessary maintenance of the system, in the best of cases the refrigerant is cleaned -recycled- to enter it again into the AC ducts of the vehicle and not waste anything. The process is achieved and efficient if it is carried out with the right machines and with good practices. But in most of Latin America this is not the case.

The fact that this procedure is not fully performed in Latin America has many backgrounds; First is that the machinery to perform the procedure is very expensive, causing as a consequence, that service stations perform the maintenance of the vehicular AC without the appropriate equipment and without the slightest degree of awareness for the environment, releasing into the atmosphere the refrigerant used and inserting new into the car system.

Unfortunately, technicians in service centers without machinery insist on making vehicle owners believe that recycling refrigerant is useless, and that it is better to buy a new refrigerant, knowing that in reality it costs 70% more than the work of recycling, as stated by Jorge Colaço, economist and specialist in gas recycling from Brazil.

In part, this attitude of the technicians is due, according to Jorge Colaço, to the fact that "the manufacturers of refrigerant gases do not want it to be recycled, and then they tell their distributors, not the general public, that recycled gases are bad".

Another factor that aggravates the problem is the ignorance on the part of the end user who does not know that the procedure exists and apart, at least in Latin America, does not have a sufficient degree of awareness, about the importance of caring for the environment.

These reasons and some others that escape, frame the terrain that must be faced by the ministries of environment, responsible for bringing to a successful conclusion the agreements agreed in the Kyoto protocol. However, the challenge belongs to everyone, given the commitment to the environment; entrepreneurs and unions in the sector must lead the change, adopting technologies and offering technicians the training in the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out the work with a sense of cause; In addition, unions and government entities must direct resources that illustrate to the end user about the what and why, of the recovery and recycling of refrigerants, in vehicular air conditioning.