In the refrigeration and air conditioning industry, technologies
to reduce environmental impacts, such as global warming,
ozone-layer depletion, and discharging industrial wastes,
are getting much attention nowadays. This paper reports the
Life Cycle Assessment conducted to comparatively analyze two
air conditioner units for residential use. One is a traditional
type with HCFC22 being used for its refrigerant and the other
is with HFC410A. Because the main focus of this analysis is on
the comparison of the refrigerants, data of the refrigerants used
are taken from the actual measurements in their production and
disposal stages. As a result, the ozone layer depleting effect can
be eliminated completely by using HFC410A. On the other hand,
the global warming effect doesn"t get reduced extensively by
using HFC410A. However, it does so by treating used refriger-ants
with a proper waste management. Moreover, it can be
proved that using HFC410A reduces environmental impacts in
all the other impact categories assessed, which are acidification,
air pollution, water pollution, and energy consumption. To con-clude
this case study, replacing HCFC22 with HFC410A for the
refrigerant is certainly one of the effective methods for reducing
environmental impacts given by air conditioners.
|
