[HN Gopher] No Refrigerant Left Behind
___________________________________________________________________
No Refrigerant Left Behind
Author : exp1orer
Score : 290 points
Date : 2022-07-01 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.recoolit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.recoolit.com)
| williamsmj wrote:
| How is this different from https://tradewater.us/?
| userbinator wrote:
| IMHO the CFCs were one of the biggest advances in technology in
| the 20th century. Non-toxic, non-flammable, and stable under
| ordinary conditions, and providing very good efficiency compared
| to the alternatives. The problem is with large-scale atmospheric
| releases, not with the substance itself.
|
| Thus I am absolutely in agreement with recollecting, reselling,
| and reusing, but in strong opposition to destroying what would
| otherwise be useful. The latter only encourages the replacement
| of equipment in a continued cycle of forced obolescence, which
| might be far worse from a CO2 perspective.
|
| I've always found it a little amusing that R152a, which is a
| pretty good replacement for R12, you can buy in "gas dusters" and
| legally vent all you want to the atmosphere, but it's technically
| illegal according to the EPA to recharge an R12 system with it.
|
| This is from the viewpoint of someone who restores and repairs
| old appliances. Environmental considerations aside, I'd never
| vent deliberately, just because of how expensive and rare these
| substances are now --- and not surprisingly, there is an
| underground market for banned refrigerants too.
|
| Thus, "you're throwing away money if you vent refrigerant" is
| probably going to have a much bigger effect than mentioning
| "climate change".
| jsmith45 wrote:
| The illegal to retrofit R152a thing is mostly about old systems
| not being designed to ensure that in the event of a leak people
| are not exposed to high levels (concentrations of 3.7% v/v or
| above) for more than 15 seconds.
|
| Old designed for R12 were not engineered to meet those
| guarentees. R152a can be huffed to get high, and doing so can
| be lethal. Thus we know that prolonged exposures to high enough
| concentrations of R152a can cause fatal cardiac arrhythmia.
|
| So it is fundamentally a safety concern. Just an unfortunate
| one, considering how good it otherwise is as an R12
| replacement.
| anonu wrote:
| Could you make a device that destroys the refrigerant on the
| spot?
| christolles wrote:
| Nobody is working on refrigerants bc they're nerdy and hard.
| Recoolit is super important!
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why can't salt water be used as a refrigerant?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Water _is_ a refrigerant (R-718).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants
|
| It's not a very good one for general space cooling for the
| reasons others have stated here, at least near typical ambient
| conditions. Water / steam _are_ often used for space _heating_
| , though there the energy conveyed is typically from combustion
| rather than via a heat pump as in an air conditioner.
|
| Water _does_ work well for cooling high-temperature equipment
| such as automobile engines and power plants.
|
| Both typically operate at or above the standard atmospheric
| boiling point of water.
| sp332 wrote:
| Refrigerants have to be compressible to increase their
| temperature above ambient. Or equivalently, to be expandable to
| cool them. Salt water wouldn't work at all.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| And refrigerants work best when you can take advantage of a
| phase change in there to move far more heat than just
| compressing/releasing.
| ohnomatopoeia wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! Based on my reading, reducing refrigerants is
| one of the highest-impact ways to reduce planet risk.
|
| "Our plan is simple and has zero technical risk" What do you see
| as the biggest risk? And what is your assessment for why no one
| has pursued this approach before?
| jotm wrote:
| Speaking of refrigerants, you can replace R22 directly, R134
| sometimes directly but desirably with new oil and capillary, and
| probably other refrigerants with... R290 - an innovative compound
| that is very environmentally friendly and cheap. Also known as
| _Propane_.
|
| I've done it with my home office room A/C, a small 12,000 BTU
| unit. I couldn't believe it when I found out you can do that.
|
| They say R290 is cleaner, purer, blah blah, but the gas from a
| simple propane tank you can get anywhere works fine. Remains to
| be seen for how long, so far 2 summers and going strong.
| kky wrote:
| This work is high impact for low effort (relative to carbon
| removal and sequestration), ready to deploy today, and largely
| overlooked. This type of effort is crucial to address -- as fast
| as possible. I'm really happy to see this.
| wcoenen wrote:
| > _our credits are as high-quality as the best carbon removal
| technology, can scale up much faster, and are currently offered
| at 1 /10th the price_
|
| I'm confused about this remark about price. Isn't there a market
| of buyers and sellers? Why would one sell carbon credits below
| market price?
| exp1orer wrote:
| Precisely because credits are not really a commodity, so some
| buyers have preferences about what credits to buy and how much
| they are willing to pay. There are some subset of buyers and
| sellers who pretend that all credits are the same, but usually
| that's an excuse to pay for the cheapest possible credits
| (which in many cases achieve nothing).
| wcoenen wrote:
| If these credits are higher quality as claimed, then they
| should sell at a higher price, not lower.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Selling high quality credits at a higher price isn't really
| accomplishing the goal of maximising climate impact.
|
| If you just want to get rich, work in finance.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Just wanted to say I agree that your credits are of much
| better quality than the average of what you usually find on
| the market. Carbon credits right now are like the new (but
| also old?) shitcoins.
|
| I have a startup in this space but we mostly do MRV, always
| looking for solutions like yours to link to our clients and
| contribute to this new economy. Send me an email (check
| profile) to get in touch!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| To move market demand to them. They're offering a premium
| product at a deep discount. They could raise prices after their
| model is more proven, enabling them to scale up to pull more
| refrigerant destruction in.
|
| It's your usual market pricing adoption curve. And frankly,
| their solution is more effective than paying to not cut trees
| down.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Taking market share can be done with a 10% discount. But why
| a 90% discount? That doesn't make sense to me.
| tellitnow wrote:
| dokem wrote:
| I wish HN was more based.
| tellitnow wrote:
| Its easy to see why leftists work so hard to maintain control
| of tech companies. Climate credit/offset/tax protection racket
| bullshit is one way these leftist/marxist loot large
| corporations. No one should pay one cent to climate crooks.
| tellitnow wrote:
| If you pay these people's carbon protection bribes they will
| go to their local/state/federal leftist government and say
| "we found some marks. this is a good revenue stream for us."
| and I guarantee it the leftist/marxists will MANDATE that you
| keep paying them for "carbon", forever because that is the
| scam.
| digb wrote:
| I really really love how this post touches on the bullshit that
| is the carbon credit market. Question: what incentive do BigCos
| have to buy your "high quality" carbon offsets vs the inferior
| ones you mentioned? Do you price cheaper per ton of CO2 credited?
| At the end of the day they're just trying to comply at the
| cheapest price possible, right?
| exp1orer wrote:
| There is definitely a lot of bullshit out there but when
| companies decide to pay for climate mitigation, even as a
| marketing ploy, I think that is net good.
|
| Many companies are certainly looking to buy the cheapest
| credits they can find but there are promising indications that
| things are changing, led by companies like Stripe and Shopify.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| The post says these credits are 10x cheaper
| exp1orer wrote:
| We are 10x cheaper than the high-quality carbon removal that
| for example Stripe Climate is purchasing. But we are 10x more
| expensive than the "low quality" credits that I describe in
| the post. So overall there is a 100x differential between
| what is allegedly the same ton of carbon, based on perceived
| quality and other factors.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is a useful business that only exists because of carbon
| credits.
|
| I winced a bit at their attacks on low quality carbon credits
| because the very idea has been under sustained attack by
| climate change deniers for decades.
|
| Oh, rich people just paying money for carbon credits and still
| flying around the world, that's not real it's all fake, like
| climate change.
|
| Obviously some are better than others, but the concept itself
| is useful and worth fighting to improve, not write off.
| jmcwjmcw wrote:
| Really cool approach to decarbonization!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I just had my air conditioner replaced last week, and I walked
| out to check on the tech doing the work just as he finished
| removing the refrigerant from the old system. By venting it to
| atmosphere. _forehead slap_. I was under the impression the EPA
| will go after technicians _personally_ if they get caught doing
| that. R410a may not be the same ozone-depleting refrigerant as
| R-22, but it 's still a lot worse than CO2 for greenhouse effect.
|
| I heard they're switching next year away from R410a to something
| new. But... not propane?
| sbradford26 wrote:
| There is a good chance they might have been purging nitrogen
| they put into the system. If you are replacing the evaporator
| and condenser but not the line set, it is normal to purge the
| existing line set with nitrogen to clear anything out. That is
| partially what makes it so difficult to catch people doing it,
| since it is not obvious whether they are venting refrigerant or
| nitrogen.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Ah, okay, maybe he did capture it after all then. I did
| notice that it wasn't making any vapor clouds like it seems
| to when you're unscrewing the lines and a bit escapes. I
| thought maybe it was just the end of the process and that's
| why, but nitrogen would totally explain that.
|
| He definitely had a bottle of nitrogen on hand because he
| used that when pressure testing the new system. And it was
| just a replacement of the evaporator coil and the condenser,
| so the line set was reused. Your explanation makes perfect
| sense, thanks!
| sbradford26 wrote:
| Yeah HVAC techs use nitrogen a lot. They use it for
| pressure testing, cleaning line sets, flowing while brazing
| to avoid oxidation, and sometimes even to clean out
| condensate lines. Hopefully your AC is working well, it is
| in the mid 90s here today in the New England.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Something doesn't quite add up in my mind - I must be missing
| something, please help HN...
|
| So a regular home refrigerator has about 60 grams of R600a in it.
| It has a global warming potential of 3. That means if you
| illegally vent it to the atmosphere, you are doing the same
| environmental harm as venting 180 grams of CO2.
|
| However, if you hire a trained technician to extract the gas for
| you, and he drives 10 km to get to your house, then his van (a
| brand new average van getting 158 g/CO2 per km) will emit 1580
| grams of CO2.
|
| Considering this, it seems crazy to bother regulating this stuff.
| thaeli wrote:
| The regulations are finally starting to acknowledge that.
| You're allowed to vent propane, CO2, and a few other
| refrigerants now.
| hristov wrote:
| R600a has been specifically designed to have a low global
| warming potential. Unfortunately this is not true for most
| refrigerants used today, most of them have global warming
| potentials in the thousands. R600a is still flammable so it
| should be replaced by a trained technician.
| leguminous wrote:
| Venting R600A (isobutane) isn't really the problem. This stuff
| gets vented from things like backpacking stoves fairly
| regularly. R410A is what's used in most modern HVAC equipment
| and it has a GWP of around 4000 (it's complicated because it's
| a mix of two refrigerants). 3000g of R410A might be in a small
| to moderate-sized system.
| koreanguy wrote:
| johnla wrote:
| Feels like the perfect thing for a Bill Gates, Elon Musk or other
| rich guy to bankroll. I know it's not the job of billionaires to
| do but it should be a government thing. But the Southeast Asian
| countries probably wouldn't do it and neither would the US do it
| for another country. The amount they're trying to raise seems
| like it would be tiny for a billionaire type.
| epaulson wrote:
| Refrigerants are really interesting - we phased out a bunch of
| them a few decades ago because they were destroying ozone, but
| what we replaced them with had high Global Warming Potential
| (GWP.) The new thing that all of the HVAC companies are working
| on are finding new refrigerants that have low GWP and work well
| in their equipment. One of the tricky things is a lot of the low
| GWP refrigerants are mildly flammable, so there's some thought
| about trying to revise the building codes to permit their use.
| Nick87633 wrote:
| And yet people have no issues running natural gas pipes in
| walls and operating gas cooktops indoors. Bureaucracy gonna
| bureaucrat.
| pkulak wrote:
| The writeup mentions fraud, but doesn't say how they plan to keep
| folks from just buying refrigerant and turning it in. Unless I
| missed it. Classic "cobra effect" stuff.
| shalmanese wrote:
| Planet Money did a story [1] in 2020 about a US team running a
| very similar scheme with the same business model to get rid of
| R12 refrigerant in the Midwest.
|
| It turns out running a business where you give people money in
| exchange for their junk is suprisingly harder than you would
| think.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/917060248
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Is it more feasible in less expensive countries? I'd imagine
| you could pay a tech in Indonesia considerably less than in the
| Midwest and they'd still consider it a good deal (assuming
| funding levels are comparable).
| shalmanese wrote:
| From the NPR story, it sounds like the business is ultimately
| constrained by customer acquisition costs and being in the US
| might actually be an advantage since the digital advertising
| market is more mature.
|
| In fact, now that OP has jogged my memory, I might start
| using this as an interview question for junior marketing
| people. If given a budget of $10K, how would you deliver me
| enough people willing to sell me 1000L of 10+ year old
| refrigerant? I bet the answers would be revealing and almost
| all wrong.
| mh- wrote:
| ok, what's the "right" answer?
| shalmanese wrote:
| Whatever answer the company mentioned in the article is
| using, assuming they're still successful.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Whew, this has to be the weirdest instance of comparative
| advantage I've seen in the wild.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect part of it is just lack of knowledge; if someone
| showed up at your front door offering you money for some
| random item in your garage you'd be tempted to politely
| decline; because if someone is going out of their way to
| offer you cash, it's probably worth more than they're
| offering.
| noneeeed wrote:
| If it's the one I'm thinking of that episode made me so
| frustrated about a segment of the population. They had to lie
| about what they were doing because there were people who
| objected to the fact this was being done to protect the
| environment and would refuse to sell to them essentially to
| stick it to the environmentalists.
|
| The degree to which not screwing up the environment has become
| partisan for some people is really quite depressing.
| codefreeordie wrote:
| Why do you suppose that sentiment is so strong?
| moralestapia wrote:
| You have a valid question and I'm also interested in this.
| It's always a good first step to get to understand the
| opposing view.
| tantalor wrote:
| Probably because any "skepticism" about climate change (no
| matter how reasonable) is basically taboo (cancelable
| offense) which triggers knee-jerk opposition in
| reactionary/contrarian types.
|
| Happens with other topics, like transgender treatment for
| kids.
| toyg wrote:
| Nah, it was already like that when "global warming" (as
| it was previously known in pop culture) was still being
| argued among scientists.
|
| Some people just hate change and being told how they
| should live.
| kmacdough wrote:
| It's also amplified by the humiliation many kids
| experience when struggling in school systems. Causes a
| general distaste for reason and science because, in a
| very real way, it hurt them as a child. Not actually
| science and reason itself, but people pushing it and
| claiming to represent it.
| ars wrote:
| Because environmentalists have a truly terrible track
| record.
|
| They keep advocating for things that won't really help the
| environment - or actively hurt it. As long as those things
| pass some kind of "purity test".
|
| For example:
|
| Being against nuclear power.
|
| Plastic straw ban (the replacements are way worse for the
| environment).
|
| Banning natural gas in homes (using electricity for your
| stove, water heater and dryer has greater emissions).
|
| Plastic bags vs others types - study after study has shown
| this helps litter, but is worse in every other possible
| way.
|
| Recycling plastic rather than burning it. Burning it is
| better for the environment, but "sounds bad".
| mrexroad wrote:
| I'm left scratching my head at most of your examples. Got
| any citations?
| ars wrote:
| See my reply here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949804 about
| burning plastic.
|
| Nuclear power should be obvious.
|
| Plastic straws take FAR FAR FAR less energy than metal
| ones - don't forget the hot water to wash the metal one.
| Paper straws are usually coated with stuff, the paper
| takes more energy that plastic, and the coating doesn't
| break down - so you don't even get the compost.
|
| So long as we are burning natural gas for energy, it's
| better to use it directly in your home, vs have someone
| else burn it, make electricity, then use that.
|
| Plastic bags are good for litter, but you would have to
| use reusable ones hundreds of times, and never wash them
| - ever, for them to be better. Not to mention people
| reuse around half of them for garbage bags, so if you ban
| them, people still need to buy them.
| aesthesia wrote:
| > So long as we are burning natural gas for energy, it's
| better to use it directly in your home, vs have someone
| else burn it, make electricity, then use that.
|
| Only if you're using resistive heating. Heat pumps run on
| natural-gas-produced electricity can be at least as
| efficient as direct natural gas combustion for heating,
| and they automatically transition to cleaner sources of
| energy as the grid does.
|
| > you would have to use reusable ones hundreds of times,
| and never wash them - ever, for them to be better
|
| I understand that this is the case for cotton bags, IIRC
| due to high water use in cotton production, but for other
| types of reusable bags the threshold is lower.
|
| > people reuse around half of them for garbage bags
|
| This estimate seems like it's significantly too high. I
| do most of my grocery shopping at places that don't
| provide free plastic bags, and yet I still end up with
| far more single-use plastic bags than I could ever use
| for garbage. I would guess that no more than 10% of
| single-use bags actually get reused for trash.
| StillBored wrote:
| As a frustrated environmentalist myself. I would just
| like to say, burning or not burning natural gas for
| heating is dependent on a lot of factors. But the GP is
| generally right in most of the US because the energy is
| already coming from coal or natural gas. Both of which
| are back of the envelope about 50% efficient at
| converting heat from the burnt coal/gas to electricity.
| Add in the transmission and distribution loss (aka step
| up/down transformers, increasing distances to the
| electric plant as they are moved farther outside of
| cities/etc) and its another ~5-10% loss, and then the
| final conversion assuming a heat pump has a 50% gain. So
| its roughly a wash, and the actual gain/loss is dependent
| on electric mix (nuke+hydro), how cold it is outside
| (heat pumps for heating get really inefficient as the
| temps drop until they are basically restive heating,
| which many switch to after a certain point to avoid just
| burning up the compressor).
|
| There are similar problems around wind/solar, which tend
| to just be green washing natural gas peaker plants, many
| of which aren't even combined cycle. So the easy back of
| the envelope here is, that if your not getting ~50% of
| your power from a nuke its likely that burning the gas in
| your house is more CO2 friendly (the places with lots of
| hydro also have nukes, so 1rst order approximation).
|
| And the plastic bag thing, is again feel good because
| those bags both have a very short time to degrade
| (despite all the environmentalist misleading people into
| thinking they last decades, which is true when they are
| buried in a landfill, but that isn't the case they then
| talk about which is finding them in the open environment
| where UV destroys them in a few months to a couple
| years).
|
| The plastic drink bottles though? Those are much more
| robust, but just about no one banned them in favor of
| recreating the commercial bottle washing systems we had
| before and that exist in mexico/etc. But again, one had
| to be very careful about total system costs, which is how
| we get back to nukes. We have to shift the energy curve
| away from CO2 sources, and the only way to really do that
| is to find a significantly more energy dense mechanism.
| And we have one, which is somewhere in the ballpark of 7
| million times as dense per Kg and instead of arguing
| about the CO2 being emitted to move or manufacture
| things, we could basically zero it out with 40 year old
| technology and likely gain another order of magnitude of
| efficiency if we built energy systems with modern
| technology that actually burnt the entire fuel load
| rather than calling it "waste".
|
| Most environmentalist are just as uninformed as the
| climate deniers, which is why we are stuck.
|
| PS: once you start to understand much of the above you
| can also see how premium electric cars can frequently be
| worse for the climate than econobox gas. The numerical
| systemwide advantage isn't so overwhelming to wipe out
| the disadvantages in places that get a lot of power from
| coal.
| ars wrote:
| Heat pumps work fine for home heat, but I specifically
| mentioned hot water and dryer. Heat pump do not work well
| for those applications - I considered buying them and
| checked into it.
|
| Your oven also uses resistive heat. Induction can work
| well, but is underpowered if you are cooking more than 3
| or 4 things at once (especially if you also use the
| oven). You need around double the electric service most
| homes run to the range (there is no standardized plug for
| it).
|
| Induction is only a replacement for causal cooks, people
| who make full course large meals will not be happy with
| it.
| gambiting wrote:
| It sounds like(yet again) another US only problem. My
| induction hob here in UK is wired to run at 7.2kW and the
| last thing I would describe it as is "underpowered" -
| even with all rings turned on at max power, things will
| burn instantly. It's a vast vast improvement over a gas
| range, wouldn't be without it.
|
| >>but I specifically mentioned hot water and dryer.
|
| I've never in my life have seen a dryer that runs on gas.
| Is this a thing?
|
| >> Heat pump do not work well for those applications
|
| What's wrong with heat pump dryers? They are awesome, as
| long as you aren't putting them in an unheated space like
| a garage. They use much less energy than condenser dryers
| and considerably less than vented ones, while being
| pretty quick.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You are wrong on the facts about all of these, which is
| impressive in its own way, but just to focus in on one:
|
| Burning plastic isn't better for the environment than
| recycling. It is better than landfill, assuming you're
| using the heat to displace fossil fuels though.
|
| You can check out the waste hierarchy on wikipedia if you
| care about being well informed about stuff:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy
| ars wrote:
| No, I am not wrong. That's what's sad about this. People
| actually believe in all these things, not realizing they
| don't help the environment. And once people do find out
| how badly they have been mislead they tend to have a
| backlash and turn completely against anything an
| environmentalists suggests.
|
| Go read a study on the energy and water costs of
| recycling plastic. But I'll give you a quick summary:
|
| Plastic has two energy components. The energy embodied in
| it because it's flammable, and the energy to manufacture
| it.
|
| It takes more energy to recycle plastic, than it does to
| manufacture it. So why do people want to recycle it?
| Because they want to recover the energy embodied in it!
|
| But if you burn it, you get that energy back, AND you got
| to use the plastic for some productive purpose. And since
| recycling it takes more energy than manufacturing it new,
| burning plastic is always better than recycling it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Here's a meta review of Life Cycle Analysis that says
| otherwise.
|
| Different countries, different methodologies, different
| assumptions but recycling being better than burning which
| is in turn better than landfill across a range of
| environmental impacts is fairly consistent.
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/10/5340/pdf
|
| > Overall, this review found that for all the studies
| which aiming to compare waste treatment technologies,
| mechanical recycling comes out as the environmentally
| preferable option in most cases
|
| Hopefully this:
|
| > And once people do find out how badly they have been
| mislead they tend to have a backlash and turn completely
| against anything an environmentalists suggests.
|
| also applies to you finding out that you've been lied to
| by people who have a vested interest in generating
| exactly that backlash against environmentalist.
| ars wrote:
| That study is making the exact same error I already
| mentioned: They are counting the embodied energy of the
| flammable plastic as GWP, while not discounting the
| energy saved by burning the plastic instead of some other
| fuel.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They literally cite that as the benefit it provides over
| landfill. All of the studies, that this is a meta review
| of, do that. It's just a fact that it releases CO2.
|
| > Similar discretion is needed while comparing the
| results obtained for the WTE [waste to energy] option by
| the four studies. It is known that the incineration
| process emits greenhouse gases, but it also generates
| thermal energy and electricity which can be used as an
| alternative to fossil fuel consumption. However, the
| results indicate that overall, the WTE option contributes
| adversely towards the global warming problem, with all
| high positive impact values between 50% and 100%.
| However, all four studies indicated a negative impact
| value for AP, indicating that the incineration process is
| advantageous in reducing the impact of acidification,
| making it the second most environmentally friendly method
| of disposal, and suitable for disposal of the residues
| discarded by the MRF process.
|
| The key point being, if you can get your heat or
| electricity from a non-fossil source, then it's
| preferable to do so. Because releasing CO2 into the
| atmosphere is bad for climate change.
|
| But luckily for WTE, the are other aspects that make
| landfill even worse. Still not as good as recycling, just
| like all those environmentalists have been saying,
| correctly, for years. How boringly non-contrarian of
| them.
| ars wrote:
| That paragraph you quoted is logically inconsistent. I
| mean think about it - if you are substituting other oil
| for this plastic, how in the world can your plastic have
| "100%" GWP?
|
| That would imply they somehow manage to emit double the
| CO2 that the plastic actually contains. Or they burn it
| and don't capture any energy at all, so there is no
| substitution taking place.
|
| And the negative GWP for recycling? That's impossible.
| Recycling something does not remove CO2 from the air -
| rather it costs CO2 to do the recycling. I suspect they
| are subtracting the embodied energy of the plastic to get
| that figure, which is dishonest.
|
| Sorry, but this "study" is worthless. But it's an
| excellent example of the sorry state of environmentalism.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| 29 published Life Cycle Analysis papers from different
| authors in different reputable journals in different
| countries all got confused about this, then the meta
| review that talks in detail about the different
| assumptions they all made also missed this?
|
| That seems unlikely.
|
| I've never even seen this specific meta review before, I
| just knew that's what they all said and grabbed the first
| link I found to a recent one. Feel free to check others,
| they will all broadly agree because this is fairly boring
| stuff.
| ars wrote:
| Welcome to the club. Yah, that is the current state of
| environmental research. It's just junk.
|
| This is why I started this thread with "Because
| environmentalists have a truly terrible track record.".
| And this is also why so many people are so distrustful of
| what "experts" say about this topic.
|
| Environmental research is so dependent on assumptions
| it's basically impossible to do it honestly. Usually an
| author will have a goal in mind, then write a paper to
| reach that goal, and he'll have no trouble doing so -
| just change an assumption here or there, and you'll be
| successful.
|
| If you want a way to cut through the nonsense just follow
| the money: Resources cost money, the method that is
| cheapest, to a rough approximation, is the one that uses
| the fewest resources.
| shalmanese wrote:
| Yup, that's the one. Had that exact same feeling of
| frustration which is why the story is still fresh in my
| memory 2 years later.
| ip26 wrote:
| As I recall it wasn't "to stick it to the environmentalists",
| it was simply preservationist thinking. They didn't want
| something they saw as scarce & useful destroyed, the same way
| you might prefer to sell your old laptop to someone who will
| appreciate it and re-use it vs someone who wants to melt it.
| thaeli wrote:
| There was a lot of overlap between people with each of
| those opinions. My recollection is the same as yours,
| though - the motivation was more preservation and the idea
| that "the good stuff" was now a limited resource that could
| never be replaced.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| My neighbor, whose political affiliation you can guess,
| actively gives us shit for recycling. It is a free service
| where we are, and I don't bother recycling the low-value
| plastic crap, primarily thick dry cardboard, glass and metal,
| and this dude still pokes fun at it every time he sees the
| bin. Just the dumbest damn people.
| __alexs wrote:
| Some plastics are worth something like 10x more than glass
| in the recycling market. I think PET is the big one.
| skybrian wrote:
| Interesting. Where could I read more about this?
| throw10920 wrote:
| Here's a strategy that I've found works decently with these
| people: frame it in terms of (1) being resourceful (2)
| being responsible and preserving resources for the next
| generation (especially their children, if they have them)
| (3) not being "lazy and wasteful" (you might not like that
| framing, but it kind of works better for that kind of
| personality) and (4) national sovereignty (the more
| wasteful we are with resources, the more we have to depend
| on other governments for them).
|
| There's also a few good ones for moving away from ICEs: (1)
| I'd rather _make things_ out of oil /plastic than just burn
| it up (2) national sovereignty and (3) resilience in case
| of war or disaster.
|
| Relatedly, I don't think I've every heard an
| environmentalist use these points. Any idea what that is?
| agentdrtran wrote:
| they do all the time, it doesn't work. people might be
| dumb but they are not dumb enough to know when they're
| being pandered to. they have a cultural signifier and
| they like it that way.
| fouric wrote:
| > Just the dumbest damn people.
|
| They might be less stubborn if you were less condescending
| and spent more time actually trying to come up with good
| arguments to convince them. pretty clear that being
| arrogant never changes anyone's mind. inclined to believe
| that you don't actually care about convincing, just judging
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Why does he need to convince anyone? If he wants to
| recycle, he should be able to do so without people
| getting in his way until they're "convinced".
| nebula8804 wrote:
| The issue is that with Trump these folks have themselves
| gotten arrogant. The country was slowly creeping forward
| in progress so before him, while these people may have
| acted this way from time to time, they mostly just
| resigned themselves to accepting the changing winds.
|
| Now that the Pandora's box has been opened, they feel
| emboldened because they got one of their own in the white
| house.
|
| I feel this is partially why anger has increased in the
| country since he decided to run for president.
|
| Their argument is always to "change your own behavior"
| while not doing anything about their own terrible
| behavior.
| zzen wrote:
| Short of actually knowing if he tried to convince his
| neighbor and how that worked/didn't, you're actually just
| doing the same: judging & being arrogant.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You are correct, if convincing is the goal. Attempting to
| convince the unwilling becomes exhausting over time.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| There is no such thing as a free service
| hinkley wrote:
| There is when the city is getting paid for the recycled
| material.
|
| In fact some cities offset the price of trash service
| with the money from recycling. Which is part of the
| impetus to fine people for not separating. You're costing
| the city money.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Probably because in most of the US recycling is fake and it
| all ends up in the landfill anyway, or the amount of energy
| spent recycling outweighs the savings.
|
| Recycling is something the oil companies came up with to
| whitewash their image, and justify single use plastics, it
| doesn't work, has never worked and it's hard to see how it
| would work. This is the real "Inconvenient Truth."
|
| If you really wanna "do your part to fight climate change,"
| you're better off trying to live like someone out of 1890
| before plastics was a thing, and people repaired/patched
| 100x before even considering replacements. You'll have less
| time for arguing with idiots like me online but you'll be
| much happier and actually be making a positive
| contribution.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| There is a quickly growing movement for multi-use
| consumables. Its become a huge thing among the youngest
| complete with Instagram "influencers" peddling
| reusability to consumer brand companies releasing
| products that are meant to be "re-filled" instead of just
| tossing out containers and buying another. In the cities
| stores are popping up that specialize in selling
| "refills" to consumables that you come by with your own
| container and pay by weight.
|
| Things such as refillable water bottles are simple
| examples of this as well.
|
| Of course MAGA country is a laggard so this will probably
| take another 5-10 years to become adopted after it
| becomes the norm in the left cities->suburbs>rural.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| > Probably because in most of the US recycling is fake
| and it all ends up in the landfill anyway, or the amount
| of energy spent recycling outweighs the savings.
|
| > Recycling is something the oil companies came up with
| to whitewash their image, and justify single use
| plastics, it doesn't work, has never worked and it's hard
| to see how it would work.
|
| No, it's because he's an idiot whose brain is turned to
| mush from obsessing about culture war politics.
|
| The plastic recycling history is vaguely interesting for
| some plastics and completely irrelevant for glass and
| metals which are profitably recycled due to the economics
| of recycling them vs. creating them from scratch.
|
| In any case, the local waste plant recycles what they can
| and then burns the rest for energy so I'll let them make
| the call on what's profitable to process.
| hinkley wrote:
| In the case of glass it's also the physics.
|
| All fired silicon materials are more stable when they
| have been fired at least twice. If you make ceramics, you
| save all your failures to make grog, which is basically
| ceramic sand or dust. Mixed in with fresh clay it reduced
| the expansion ratio and the internal stresses.
|
| Bottles with recycled material are more sturdy than those
| without. I don't know how the process of bringing a
| bottle plant online works, but if it doesn't include
| either buying grog from a supplier or feeding all the
| glass from the test runs into a hopper I would be very
| surprised.
|
| I have never heard a physicist explain this phenomenon,
| but if you crush something it tends to break along the
| weakest points, so crushed silicon has selected out many
| of the weakest grains and left the strongest ones. Then
| either they continue to grow or they just increase the
| ratio of strong to weak.
| cptskippy wrote:
| The symbols we've come to associate with plastics being
| recyclable actually just indicate the material
| composition. And it isn't by accident that we assume that
| symbol means it's recyclable either.
|
| Plastics like PET and HDPE are recyclable but sorting
| recyclable materials from non-recyclable ones is costly
| which meant a lot of recycling does end up as waste.
|
| We need to start penalizing manufacturers and retailers
| for single-use plastics. Laws like those passed in Maine
| banned most single-use plastic bags and mandates that
| anyone offering them must also provide recycling a drop
| off bin.
|
| Consumers mostly do not have a choice about how their
| products are packaged so the onus must be shifted onto
| retailers and manufacturers who make those decisions.
| cupofpython wrote:
| ars wrote:
| The reality is that most environmentalists don't care about
| the environment, they just care about making people
| miserable. I joined some environmentalist forums because I
| cared only to realize how misanthropic most of them were,
| and they did not care at all about reality.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I've noticed this too. There's a certain religious fervor
| to it, where the only acceptable options to address a
| threat to the environment must involve some pain or cost.
| Solutions that increase abundance, or don't require
| suffering, are at best suspect at worst unspeakable.
| hinkley wrote:
| This is one of my favorite things about permaculture.
| It's turning gardeners into conservationists, not
| conservationists into gardeners. If you don't already
| like plants it's too involved (intellectually and
| sometimes physically) of a hobby/cause to get into it
| just so you can lambast people.
|
| The glaring exception to this is that we absolutely are
| all coming after your lawn, and that's such a hot button
| issue for people.
| cupofpython wrote:
| are lawns really such a problem? I see an ecosystem next
| to my front door as a risk. Lawns are easily managed,
| they provide line of sight across my property to the
| street, it's hard for wild animals to nest next to where
| i, and my future children, need to walk every day. I
| really dont see it as a problem.
|
| on the flipside, the greater back half of my yard not
| near the house i encourage to be an ecosystem. If
| everyone on the block did so, then the entire middle of
| the block would be a continuous piece of nature. Front
| lawns create scattered pockets of nature at best and seem
| to cause a lot of friction.
|
| I think of the Geese all around the industrial park near
| me, and how going into and out of your office on the
| sidewalk can become a problem if theres a mother goose
| around who thinks youre threatening her family
| hinkley wrote:
| Some substantial fraction of all pesticide and fertilizer
| release into waterways comes from cities not farms. Also
| a huge part of the non agricultural water supply goes to
| lawns. So while I empathize with the people who say that
| asking residents to stop watering their lawns to conserve
| water, but we don't do that for farmers, that's still
| quite an impactful action from the perspective of the
| city's water supply.
|
| The farmer is filling up a tank or hopper with hundreds
| or thousands of pounds of chemicals that cost them a ton
| of money so they can't really afford to have it just
| sitting around. They know when they fertilize right
| before a rainstorm just how much money they lost. The
| feedback is pretty immediate. Some people would say this
| is sufficient to prevent problems, but we know that's not
| true. It _discourages_ problems, but it doesn 't prevent
| them.
|
| Meanwhile your neighbor has a $10 container they bought
| last year and they'll need a new one next year even if
| they didn't use it, so who cares if I fertilize and
| forget to turn off the sprinklers? Hardly any
| discouragement at all. It's very open loop.
| cupofpython wrote:
| I wasnt thinking about the water supply, the dangers
| there makes sense. The fertilizer issue seems tangential.
| We can ban / limit the sue of fertilizer without telling
| people they cant have lawns.
|
| What's the alternative? without a lawn people will likely
| opt to concrete their property - which I guess would be
| better for water but kind of depressing
| abawany wrote:
| IMO, most lawns are fake and not actually comprised of
| native species, which is where the waste and pollution
| comes in. A person in Arizona or California can xeriscape
| using native cactii etc. or they can put in a St.
| Augustine lawn - it seems to me that the former would be
| easier to manage with less waste than the latter.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| Do you have any good resources for lawn-free land
| management? I'm moving to Appalachia and will have an
| acre of creekside lawn I'd love to replace with something
| more sustainable/productive. And I'm a big gardener
| already.
| hinkley wrote:
| Google permaculture. If you're up in the hills, Sepp
| Holzer, swales and keylines will keep you busy for a long
| time.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| My guess is they're missing large demographics, hispanics that
| scrap metal. I'd imagine if they took effort to do campaigns in
| Spanish, Polish and Chinese, they'd have a lot better luck.
| fortran77 wrote:
| And China will start manufacturing R12 and selling it, if the
| price paid for exchanging it is more than the manufacturing
| cost.
| elil17 wrote:
| Chinese companies have historically violated bans on making
| banned gasses, but other countries have detected this. After
| that, the Chinese government has actually cracked down on
| them and eliminated those emissions. They worked with
| international groups to find the violators and then raided
| and even demolished illegal factories:
| https://www.climatechangenews.com/2021/02/10/study-
| suggests-...
| foobiekr wrote:
| China's policy of responding only when they are caught is
| broad and applies to a wide variety of violations. The
| problem is, they also make it very hard to police China.
| This is deliberate.
|
| The 1-2% that get caught and punished are acceptable
| breakage from the broader picture.
| elil17 wrote:
| The fact that levels have fallen dramatically since this
| operation shows that much more than 1-2% are being
| caught. Not trying to defend the Chinese government as a
| whole, but on GHGs specifically they are doing more than
| many other countries to curb emissions.
| hinkley wrote:
| Absolutely there is someone somewhere in China who has
| built an R-12 plant with a high end capture system for
| escaping volatiles and a weird ventilation system that
| gets past the satellite imaging.
| asah wrote:
| Is it possible to deactivate these gasses in situ ? I could see
| that being more successful than transportation, but I know
| nothing about the chemistry...
| tfvlrue wrote:
| I'm glad to see someone taking the initiative to mitigate this
| problem. I also wonder how much "canned air" dusters contribute
| overall. If I recall correctly, they're commonly just HFC-134a in
| a can. But because it's not used as a refrigerant, it's outside
| the EPA's purview and can just be sprayed into the atmosphere
| willy-nilly. Using one can is more or less equivalent to venting
| the refrigerant from a car's AC, yet for some reason it's a
| common practice.
| function_seven wrote:
| I just looked up the MSDS[0] for my can of Dust-Off (which I
| believe is the most popular brand?). It lists the sole
| ingredient as "Ethane, 1,1-difluoro-", which turns out to be a
| refrigerant, but not 134a.
|
| It's HFC-152a[1]. Looks like it's a much "friendlier"
| refrigerant than 134 (and of course vastly better than R-12)
|
| [0] https://www.sisweb.com/referenc/msds/dust-off-sds.pdf
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%2C1-Difluoroethane
| tfvlrue wrote:
| Interesting. Did a little more digging and it looks like both
| are used for air dusters, with 134a being marketed for
| "energized circuits" because it's non-flammable (e.g.
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DNR066). 152a has ~1/10 of the
| GWP as 134a.
|
| In any case, it's still amazing to me how restricted these
| are when used as a refrigerant, but then they're sold to
| consumers to spray on whatever they want. It really undercuts
| the environmental impact of these chemicals.
| kube-system wrote:
| The can of air duster on my desk is R-152a
| oli5679 wrote:
| This article makes me a bit worried about 'cobra effects'
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
|
| "The British government, concerned about the number of venomous
| cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra.
| Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of
| snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however,
| enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income."
| latortuga wrote:
| This is addressed on the Buy Offsets page. Quoted because I
| thought the same thing as you: We never pay
| our partners more than the market price of new refrigerant,
| removing any possibility of a perverse incentive. And because
| we use well-studied industrial processes, as approved by TEAP
| at UNEP, there's no science risk: no carbon is going to bubble
| back out in 5 years, like you might worry about with soil,
| forestry, or other nature-based processes.
| fataliss wrote:
| That's the kind of projects we need to get where we need to be in
| terms of emissions. It won't be easy, but clever solutions where
| there is real $$ incentives are the ones that can actually be
| implemented!
| aperson_hello wrote:
| Why actively destroy the refrigerant (at least for refrigerants
| still in use/production)? Most can be reclaimed and re-purified
| rather than destroying - with a less energy intensive process
| than making new.
| exp1orer wrote:
| Good question!
|
| In theory, reclaiming gases that are still unrestricted for
| production/import is at least as good as destruction from a
| climate perspective. However, virgin refrigerant is really
| cheap until import bans take hold -- so there is never a point
| where it is both economically worthwhile and impactful for
| climate. In theory you could use credits to boost the economics
| around reclaim but you end up with a very messy additionality
| story. My sense is that most reclaimers are very low-margin or
| even loss leaders for the companies that produce/sell the gas!
|
| Anyway the short answer is that it's harder for us to figure
| out in this first push, but we do intend to look into it more
| closely as we expand.
| themitigating wrote:
| There are replacements for R12 that are much less damaging to
| the environment (like r134a).
|
| Eventually the gas will leave the system from a leak,
| unexpected damage, shoddy technicians, or the unit being
| destroyed
| lawl wrote:
| I don't necessarily buy this and am too lazy to look deeper into
| it. But I like your attitude, good luck.
|
| Edit: where is this 6% number coming from?
| https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
|
| Chemical & petrochemical (3.6%): energy-related emissions from
| the manufacturing of fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, refrigerants,
| oil and gas extraction, etc.
| StillBored wrote:
| Refrigerant and climate change is a problem we created by
| replacing very efficient CFC based refrigerants with a very short
| lifetime in the atmosphere with "more stable compounds".
|
| It was a huge political failure, which was completely focused on
| the "ozone hole" rather than making wise decisions. Just banning
| CFC's as propellants, and all the other uses which basically
| dumped huge quantities into the atmosphere and putting licensing
| requirements around their use, and enforcing the recapture (aka
| AC techs are tracked for how much they buy vs return), and not
| filling leaky systems would have solved the immediate problem.
| But the legislative bodies were also convinced to legislate a
| change in equipment/refrigerant to these newer compounds which
| had a huge positive effect on many manufactures and AC installers
| bottom line. And now we have to do it again because the people
| warning about the dangers of these new (frequently patented)
| refrigerant compounds were ignored.
|
| Like the story about American democracy, this is going to be one
| of those cases of trying all the wrong approaches before doing
| the right thing.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Funny enough the compressor on the older heat pump that came w/
| my house blew this week after a power surge. Got to watch a
| smokey mist of R-22 leak for a several hours.
|
| I knew the unit was into EoL based on age, but when something
| seems to work fine it's really hard feel like preemptive
| replacement is the right choice or priority.
|
| At least in the US R-22 is so expensive and people still repair
| and recharge units not infrequently. Wonder how reasonable or
| possible capturing leaking refrigerant would be. I was watching
| it leak and vaguely wondered if it would be possible to catch in
| a large umbrella.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Edit: Got mixed up with R-12, which _was_ used in cars and
| apparently runs at a lower pressure.
|
| I looked into an R134a conversion for my 1990 car about 10
| years ago and found that any remaining R-12 would need to be
| vacuumed out of the system and collected for re-use. I elected
| to just live without A/C for a few more years and let the
| junkyard collect the refrigerant when I ended up scrapping the
| car.
| lazide wrote:
| Normally the tech would recapture it, and it is worth
| something. It must have been a pretty dramatic failure for the
| coolant to leak from a power surge.
|
| That said, 'reduce, reuse' comes before 'recycle' for a reason.
| If the unit still worked and was reasonably close efficiency
| wise, it's just a waste to replace it when it still functions.
| StillBored wrote:
| It probably caused the power surge. What he describes is a
| fairly common failure mode. The compressors are hermetically
| sealed, and the weak point is where the AC is plugged into
| the compressor casing. As they age they corrode once the plug
| loses its own environmental seal driving up the capacitance
| of the junction, or the compressor starts to draw increasing
| amounts of current to start and run, resulting in the plugs
| melting. Basically its any number of effects, but the result
| is that the plug shorts/melts/etc and the compressor loses
| its seal at the same time.
|
| Generally this kind of failure was a couple hundred dollar
| fix. Pull the compressor, braze on a new one, flush the
| system, vacuum it down, and refill.
|
| Only now, the refrigerant can cost a grand, the markup on a
| $200 Emerson scroll is 4x, the fact that you need a license
| to work on the system means the tech charges $200 an hour,
| and it all adds up toe selling someone a new system, that is
| likely going to last 1/2 as long because R410 runs at 2-3x
| the pressure, the major manufactures have penny pinched every
| gram of metal out of the condenser/compressor tubing so its
| as thin as possible, and a half dozen other factors means
| that the 30 years a good R22 system would run for is unheard
| of now.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| In France (and maybe in the entire UE), it is mandatory for
| refrigerant to be collected, and you must bring your old
| fridge/freezer to a HWRC when you want to dispose of it.
|
| However, in a fridge/freezer the refrigerant circulate in
| metallic tubes, usually made of copper which have great
| conductivity. And what do you think happen when you leave copper
| tubes unattended at night? Copper thieves come and scrap the
| fridge with no regards for the refrigerant being released to the
| atmosphere...
| zbrozek wrote:
| Shouldn't there be provision to verify gas-tightness and recharge
| the equipment with less-harmful refrigerants?
| jws wrote:
| In the US at least, any refrigeration technician should already
| have passed his EPA 608 or 609 and be fully aware that venting a
| unit can cost him his card rendering him unable to buy
| refrigerants. Before working on all but small self contained
| units he must have access to a refrigerant recovery unit. This a
| compressor sort of thing that can move the gas from the installed
| unit into a tank for either reuse on site or taking to a
| reclamation center, where allegedly they can be paid for it.
|
| (Yes, my AC units broke and the time to even get a technician to
| look at them, was so long I researched how to diagnose them and
| do the easy fixes, ran into the EPA requirement, studied the
| material and got my EPA certification, bought a bunch of gear off
| Amazon and refrigerant from a "good old boy" at an exorbitant
| price (global shortage, plus most is sold in palette quantities),
| and fixed my own unit in half the time it would have taken to get
| an appointment with a professional company. The first unit is
| working. If I succeed at the second unit I'll even be money
| ahead. Of course if my yak had already been shaved maybe it could
| have tolerated the heat.)
| s0rce wrote:
| I was really interested in getting my certification after I saw
| how much they wanted to charge me for refrigerant. Ended up
| finding someone else to do it but seemed not that difficult.
| Glad to know someone has done it outside the industry.
| abawany wrote:
| I unfortunately got a technician who was so busy ranting
| against vaccines that he broke the schrader valve and vented a
| whole bunch of R22 into the atmosphere, while missing the real
| root cause of the failure i.e. the safety switch was triggering
| due to a clogged drain and preventing the compressor from
| running.
| exp1orer wrote:
| Well done! I took the 608 Type 1 exam (online open book) but
| never went beyond that.
|
| Venting refrigerant is illegal in most of the world but it's
| almost impossible to enforce and compliance is typically quite
| low (good data is, as you can imagine, difficult to find). CARB
| in California now requires owners of large refrigeration
| systems (>250 lb of charge IIRC) to report all refrigerant
| recharge to the state so at least there's some efforts
| underway.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Regarding additionality: does this mean that, for purposes of
| the offset, you're trusting that the technicians you train
| wouldn't have properly recovered the refridgerant anyway? Do
| you have some rough statistics to suggest this? There's also
| the issue of self-selection: the techs that work with you are
| probably more likely than the general population to be
| properly reclaiming already, for instance since the marginal
| gain from your program is greater for them (same money for no
| additional work). Have you considered this?
| lovemenot wrote:
| The company is a start-up.
|
| So what if they are picking too-low-hanging fruit
| initially? As long as their process can in principle scale
| to a point where genuine reductions are possible. And they
| do actually enter a legitimate certification process fairly
| soon. The certification authority will then become
| responsible for proper accounting.
|
| In the mean time, they are asking for investors' trust
| without verification. Not ideal, but not unreasonable for a
| PoC / MVP.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Satellite surveillance is going through a capability
| explosion at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if it could
| spot venting in the present or near future.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| The best data for compliance is to walk into any tool store
| that sells AC vacuum pumps and try to find a recovery machine
| on the shelf.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| You're correct, however most aren't going to pay the big
| cost to do that. A better way is to be able to either
| borrow a recovery unit or rent it. The other problem is
| training someone how to use the unit and then know what to
| do with the freon after recovery. Until it's made cheap and
| easy to recover, venting will continue to happen.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is something that has bugged me. I have a leak in my
| car's AC. I have injected the dye, found where the leak is.
| All I have left is to open the system and replace some old
| seals, but I can't do that right as the equipment isn't
| available. So I'm stuck venting to the air as it is the
| only thing I can do. (I could of course take it in, but
| some combination of cheap and doing my own maintenance
| means I don't)
|
| Note that the vacuum pump is often a free rental from the
| auto parts store, I don't know why they can't/don't rent
| the recovery equipment.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Try taking it to an AC shop & pay for a 2-part deal:
| evacuate it now, then fill it back up in a few days.
|
| When you put it back together you can pull a vacuum on
| it, close it off and make sure it stays that way
| overnight. But you may still want to have a professional
| shop test with higher precision than whatever gauges you
| use.
| Aloha wrote:
| Most shops will evacuate the system and remove the
| refrigerant for a small fee.
| CaptainSandwich wrote:
| Seconded. I found a local mechanic and it cost very
| little to have them remove the existing refrigerant. They
| also kept track of the amount removed (which ended up
| being very little) and offered to put it back in after
| the leak was fixed.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Do you actually own a yak, of all things, or is that last bit a
| euphemism for shaving your johnson?
| johncalvinyoung wrote:
| Not a double entendre, but a reference to a well-known idiom
| of 'yak-shaving' to refer to recursive chores with deep
| dependency trees.
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| Are these certificates difficult to get? I've considered
| getting stuff like that when I become an owner so I can DIY
| stuff because AC is a necessary luxury for me and I'd rather be
| able to repair/replace as quickly and cheaply as possible with
| no salesmen and middlemen invovled.
| jws wrote:
| The basic small appliance grade, I the read the training
| material for a couple hours at night, paid $25 for the test,
| and passed with a 98% needing something like an 80%. You will
| need a "type II" to do modern home units. That is a proctored
| test, but Skill Cat will do you there from the comfort of
| your phone.
|
| You will need something under $1000 of gear and supplies to
| get going, half that if you can rent an evacuation unit. (I
| can't find any near me.) You need to store your refrigerant
| outside where it won't get over 49degC, 120degF (assuming
| R410a) So it rates pretty high in the "pain in the ass"
| factor.
|
| For modern home units, the circuit boards and motor
| controllers seem to be a common failure point and these are
| crazy expensive from the manufacturers anyway and hard for
| you to buy as an individual. If you have an older unit before
| variable speed compressors and fans then you can probably get
| commodity parts to replace them.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I took the 609 test and got my card. The test seemed to mostly
| check if you had a heartbeat and weren't asleep. I went away
| without much confidence that 608/609 certification was really
| worth much in terms of trusting certified people to really be
| on top of the whys and how's of proper refrigerant handling.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Specialized labor certification just requires that you
| memorize the safety requirements (that will almost always be
| obvious for engineers), and at most repeat a set of steps.
|
| It can not be too onerous, because people need the work, and
| people capable of solving systems of differential equations
| have better opportunities than work on them.
| hinkley wrote:
| Memorizing the location of fire exits is also obvious and
| yet we do drills to burn it in because when you're in the
| shit it's hard to think rationally about this kind of
| stuff.
|
| A little repetition is good for the monkey brain.
| lazide wrote:
| It's just a card that can be used to beat someone over the
| head with the law harder because 'they definitely knew
| better'. Eventually (seems like CA is trying?) there will be
| paperwork that needs to be filed with fines attached, so
| maybe even 50% of folks will actually do it.
| themitigating wrote:
| It's a certification that shows the technician is aware of
| the law, similar to no trespassing signs and lease
| agreements. If it's not enforced that a problem that needs
| to be fixed. If people aren't following the correct
| procedure because they know they most likely won't get
| caught and don't care then that's a problem with them.
| jws wrote:
| The "starve the beast" legislators underfund the EPA to
| the point that there is no money for enforcement, and
| enforcement at the technician level is going to be really
| unpopular with lots of "The government fined me out of
| business" stories. The path I used to acquire refrigerant
| is a break in the chain that has been operating for years
| in the open and probably moved >100 tons of refrigerant.
| I was unreasonably disappointed that I didn't have to
| provide my brand new EPA card number.
| jws wrote:
| It's an educational test, not a proof of knowledge.
|
| If you came away knowing not to vent, to use the right
| refrigerant, not to vent, to take your waste to the
| reclaimer, not to vent, to leak test with nitrogen, not to
| vent, and that you can be fined $43,000/day for not having
| your paperwork in order... then it worked enough.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hmm. So a little venting is fine?
| thaeli wrote:
| Technically, yes - "de minimis releases" are allowed
| because there's no practical way to avoid them. This is
| the small amount of refrigerant burped out to purge
| hoses, for instance.
| dieselgate wrote:
| This is downvoted but got a chuckle from me. Recently had
| to replace a radiator on a vw TDI and had a remove the
| A/C line, there was a little bit of venting that occurred
| (the A/C didn't blow cold before so thought there was
| little if any refrigerant in the system). TLDR I suck!
| StillBored wrote:
| Its usually just one of the steps to doing it professionally.
| Most states AFAIK also have a licensing regiment required to
| work on anything not covered by the small appliance 608 type
| 1 which covers more theory of operation code compliant
| installation/etc.
|
| So the EPA cert by itself isn't usually enough to work
| professionally (unless your repairing home refrigerators).
| [deleted]
| ck2 wrote:
| > _Of course if my yak had already been shaved maybe it could
| have tolerated the heat._
|
| So many questions. r/BrandNewSentence
| svieira wrote:
| http://wiki.c2.com/?YakShaving
| jws wrote:
| Yak shaving: * a task, that leads you to perform another
| related task and so on, and so on -- all distracting you from
| your original goal.*
|
| Though depending on your local vernacular and what "yak"
| might mean to you I can see room for confusion.
|
| I used to go to a town named "Knob Lick" which my English
| acquaintances found quite an amusing town name.
| dieselgate wrote:
| Thought it was a clever double entendre but didn't take it in
| a riqsue manner myself
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| As someone who had lots of family work in Appliance repair, I
| can assure you that venting is still very common.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Just so you know, based on this little story of yours, I would
| instantly want to hire you. Great attitude.
| [deleted]
| jws wrote:
| And in my jurisdiction, after I took a two year training
| school on my nickel, then work 7500 hours as an apprentice at
| slightly over minimum wage, then did the extra stuff to be a
| contractor... you'd be able to.
|
| The requirements seem extreme, though I did break a fan blade
| in my indoor air handler while checking its temperature,
| total noob mistake. If I were hiring a trusted contractor I'd
| want someone better than me!
|
| Ideally there might be room for a grade of lightly trained
| technician which can handle the easy stuff and do some of the
| time consuming diagnostics then just throw in the towel and
| say "You need a better man than I."
| scrollaway wrote:
| I think GP might have meant hire you to do just about
| anything else, not necessarily fix an AC.
|
| I agree with them if that's what they meant :)
| bluGill wrote:
| > If I were hiring a trusted contractor I'd want someone
| better than me!
|
| I hire a contractor because they have the parts needed on
| the truck, or know where to get them fast. I also hire them
| for their insurance in case they screw up - I've hired
| someone saw them screw up and not paid for their mistake.
| tfvlrue wrote:
| Nice! I was in a very similar situation. Got the EPA cert and
| all the equipment and replaced our central AC. Glad to see I'm
| not the only one crazy enough to go through all that trouble :)
| [deleted]
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| This isn't about techs, it's about those metal scrapers that
| pick things up for free.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I've noticed that now that there's a shortage of everything not
| only is it hard to find a specialist who could do the work,
| products themselves often arrive somewhat defective.
|
| The other day we bought an indoor tent for our toddler. The
| frame is composed of wooden sticks with some having an
| aluminium tube glued at the end to connect it to another stick.
|
| One of the tubes was slightly damaged, so the other stick
| wouldn't go in.
|
| Fortunately the ceramic base of a (broken) LED bulb is harder
| than aluminium, so after some twisting I managed to file down
| the tube to size.
| jakogut wrote:
| > the destruction process permanently neutralizes the chemical
|
| This raises a few questions in my mind. TFA makes it sound like
| the refrigerant boogeyman is a problem of fixed quantity. It
| sounds like after we've destroyed all the refrigerant, it can
| cause no more harm, but clearly these refrigerants must be
| manufactured on a continual basis?
|
| Can refrigerants not be recycled? What materials go into the
| creation of refrigerants? Is anything of value lost in destroying
| refrigerants, besides the energy that went into making them?
| oliwarner wrote:
| The refrigerants we use have changed. R22 was replaced by R410a
| and that will eventually be replaced by units that can run on
| R290, or less ideally R32 or another.
|
| The organisation at work here are targeting developing
| countries who've been much slower to migrate to less harmful
| refrigerants, but old units are being cycled out for new ones,
| so new demand for janky old refrigerant (from failing units, so
| likely contaminated) is lower than you might think.
| jakogut wrote:
| This makes sense, thanks for clarifying. So the refrigerants
| in use are effectively obsolete, and after they're reclaimed
| and destroyed, should pose no further risk, as there are
| better options available.
| bilsbie wrote:
| techwiz137 wrote:
| Full disclosure. I work at a scrap yard and we routinely
| discharge systems into the air, and I am sure many many other
| scrap yards do absolutely the same.
| exp1orer wrote:
| Author here, very excited to share this with HN. Been seeing a
| lot of engineers thinking about getting into climate so I thought
| people might find it interesting. Happy to answer any questions!
| moralestapia wrote:
| You mention that you destroy the captured refrigerants. Could
| you elaborate more on how do you accomplish this?
| exp1orer wrote:
| We destroy it in an active cement kiln! The Montreal Protocol
| has a Technology and Economic Assessment Panel outlining
| approved destruction options[1] and this is one of their
| approved technologies. It's great for a few reasons:
|
| 1. Already operates at negative pressure with a high enough
| temperature and long enough residence time 2. Alkaline
| environment neutralizes the HF and HCl that are produced when
| the refrigerant burns. 3. Already consuming massive amounts
| of energy so the marginal energy use is negligible. 4. Allows
| use to use an existing facility instead of building our own
| -- great for developing countries where building infra is
| harder (but cement plants are everywhere).
|
| [1] https://ozone.unep.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/TEAP-
| DecX...
| moralestapia wrote:
| Whoa, that's great. Also, thanks for that reference I have
| something new to read later on :)
| theogravity wrote:
| I wish you'd include this information in your blog post as
| I was wondering the same thing and would be more inclined
| to contribute.
| tornato7 wrote:
| Have you reached out to KlimaDAO about this? It's definitely
| something they would be interested in
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| For whatever it's worth, I see this same thing here in Los
| Angeles. Scrappers cut open fridges, minifridges, AC units, etc
| and vent the refrigerant wherever they found the device
| (usually right on the curb). If you could make it profitable
| for them to capture it, they would. They're not making a ton of
| money off the copper.
| exp1orer wrote:
| Yeah that's definitely an issue! It's probably a bit less
| tractable than what we're dealing with because
|
| 1. Scrappers likely don't have the skills, equipment or
| inclination that AC technicians do.
|
| 2. Those self-contained units typically have a lot less
| refrigerant than the split AC systems (or large chillers) we
| see, which require venting in order to remove once installed.
| A refrigerator might have only 30 grams of charge, vs a split
| system with 2-3 kg.
| ohgreatwtf wrote:
| markrazini8 wrote:
| tristor wrote:
| If anything they are understating the problem refrigerants cause.
| Not only are most refrigerants more potent from a greenhouse
| potential, many are based on CFCs that are ozone depleters. We've
| already created a hole in the ozone layer from CFCs being used as
| aerosol propellants before that practice was banned, but we still
| have CFC refrigerants in use globally all over the place. In fact
| propellants are generally refrigerants.
| brnt wrote:
| As of recent I believe propane and/or CO2 is the only
| refrigerant left allowed for any indoor use. That seems to be
| an acceptable gas, or am I mistaken?
| tristor wrote:
| I believe the current rule is actually that any refrigerant
| has to have a GWP (Global Warming Potential) equal to or less
| than CO2. R290 (propane) has a GWP of 0.02, the new
| refrigerant for automotive use R1234yf has a GWP of less than
| 1. CO2 has a GWP of 1.
|
| So it's not required that it's CO2 or R290, but rather than
| you can use any refrigerant that has a GWP of 1 or less.
|
| R290 seems an ideal refrigerant, especially since the
| technology to use it as a refrigerant is so old/mature. The
| challenge is that it's /highly/ flammable. This is true of
| most refrigerants with a GWP less than 1. R1234yf partly
| exists because of a desire to reduce flammability.
| kube-system wrote:
| Is that a rule for cars or small appliances or something?
| Current residential air conditioners in the US all use
| R410a which has a GWP over 2000
| tristor wrote:
| It's a rule that the EU set for vehicles. EU-based
| manufacturers were the first to use r1234yf because of
| this rule, and American auto manufacturers followed suit
| to make it an industry standard, but there's no rule in
| the US other than the existing Clean Air Act, AFAIK.
|
| The rule only affects newly manufactured vehicles as
| well, so there's no requirement to phase out R410A.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| At this point most US vehicles use R134. Most R12 cars
| have been converted as once these things tend to leak,
| your ripe for a compressor rebuild, flush, oil swap, etc.
| exp1orer wrote:
| It varies by country but I'm not aware of any country that
| has fully phased out HFCs -- the EU I believe is already
| imposing import quotas but it is still legal to use.
| [deleted]
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I wonder what the carbon impact of shipping the refrigerant back
| to them is and whether it outweighs the benefits?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Given the large impact from venting to the atmosphere, it's
| almost certainly better from a carbon impact standpoint to ship
| it:
|
| _Every time he does this with a single air conditioner, it has
| the same effect as burning 250 gallons of gasoline, which is
| more than enough to drive from SF to NY and back_
|
| It surely doesn't consume 250 gallons of gasoline equivalent to
| ship the collected gas.
| lucioperca wrote:
| One can simply use ordinary Propane as an Refrigerant like in
| your fridge: https://www.green-cooling-
| initiative.org/network/best-practi...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I am SO lucky to have a friendly neighbor who's an HVAC
| technician. A relay went out on my A/C last week, and he came
| over and fixed it the next morning.
|
| Pro tip: there are certain advantages to living in a place where
| not _everyone_ is an engineer in high tech.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The problematic refrigerants are pretty diverse, being made up of
| short carbon chains (1-4 atoms typically) decorated mainly with
| chlorine or flourine atoms. For example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene
|
| Interestingly the best option for a refrigerant may be CO2
| itself, which if collected from the atmosphere has no global
| warming or ozone depletion issues. The only drawback is CO2
| refrigeration equipment has to operate at relatively high
| pressure, but this isn't a major problem:
|
| https://www.rsi.edu/blog/hvacr/carbon-dioxide-refrigerant/
|
| Getting rid of the chloro-flouro stuff makes lots of sense, but
| not producing any of it in the first place would be even better.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've often wondered what other ways we could do "refrigeration"
| without requiring such horrible gasses, CO2 would be a nice one
| (and we already distribute CO2 world-wide for soda), but
| perhaps something could be done with piezo also.
| jabl wrote:
| In Europe, and I think in much of the rest of the world
| except the US, isopropane or butane is used in common
| household refrigerators. Recently EU regulations were changed
| to allow these to be used in small split AC's as well,
| provided some flammability precautions are taken in the
| design and installation of the units.
|
| In principle you could also go without phase change
| refrigerants with the reverse Brayton cycle, essentially
| running gas turbine cycle in reverse. But AFAIU these are not
| competitive with phase change refrigerants in the usual
| temperature ranges used for AC's and refrigerators.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes a propane/isobutane blend works well, it's basically a
| drop-in replacement for R-12 in air conditioners. Straight
| propane replaces R-22 in freezers.
|
| The only drawbacks are that it's flammable, and that for
| the blend, if there is a a slow leak, the blend ratios
| change due to different partial pressures of the two
| gasses. So to recharge, you basically have to vacuum the
| system and refill with the proper blend.
|
| Ammonia also works for industrial applications (the local
| ice rink uses it) but due to its toxicity it's not ideal
| for household applications.
| mh- wrote:
| It would be useful to be able to (easily) smell a
| refrigerant leak, too.
| happyopossum wrote:
| That smell you're thinking of is an additive - propane
| and butane are relatively odorless without it.
| mh- wrote:
| Yeah - mercaptan I believe? I knew that, I guess I just
| assumed they wouldn't use a non-odorized propane..
| bombcar wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tert-Butylthiol - Because
| propane is delivered as a liquid and vaporizes to gas
| when it is delivered to the appliance, the vapor liquid
| equilibrium would substantially reduce the amount of
| odorant blend in the vapor.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanethiol is used for
| propane (usually) but for the small amounts in a
| recirculating setup they may skip it.
| mh- wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for the info.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I did a quick search on how much refrigerant is in a
| household refrigerator. Internet says 30 to 180 grams.
|
| I wouldn't be very concerned with 100 grams of propane.
| Your kitchen has probably 20kg of air. You ain't going to
| get even close to the flammability limit releasing a
| 100gm of propane into it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is about 5000 BTUs or about the same amount as 3/4
| a cup of gasoline, if I did the math right.
|
| So not nothing, but not very worrisome either.
| lazide wrote:
| Depending on your definition of 'horrible', ammonia also
| works well!
| scythe wrote:
| You're looking for magnetocaloric refrigeration and the giant
| magnetocaloric effect:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007964251.
| ..
| HideousKojima wrote:
| There's the Peltier Effect, which only has the itty bitty
| downside of requiring about 4 times as much power as a
| traditional compression-based cooling system.
| s0rce wrote:
| I had a refrigerator using propane, sadly, it didn't last very
| long (just a few years) before it died. It was a low end unit
| and repair was more than a new one, which happened to use
| conventional halocarbons.
| samatman wrote:
| The trouble is that high pressure means more embodied energy,
| and when we start talking about embodied energy, "CO2
| equivalent of 250 gallons of gas" isn't that much. Just
| releasing the gasses into the atmosphere once or twice might
| pencil out.
|
| Regardless they are very widely deployed in existing equipment
| which can't be upgraded, so a program to collect and burn these
| gasses is a very good thing.
| Tarrosion wrote:
| order of magnitude nit: the article mentions 250 gallons of
| gas, not gas for 250 miles - so roughly 25x worse
| samatman wrote:
| Thank you, updated.
|
| This seems like a better place to point out (rather than
| editing the original to say something different) that this
| actually undermines the argument: stainless steel is only
| about 6kg CO2 per kg, and a gallon of gas burned is around
| 8.
|
| That number for steel is a lot lower than I expected, but
| here it is:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_energy#In_common_mat
| e...
| lucioperca wrote:
| https://www.green-cooling-initiative.org/network/best-practi...
|
| Also good and cheap!
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| More pressure means stricter requirements for all of those non-
| obvious steps like bending and soldering, and specialized
| hardware for things like joints and bearing.
|
| Both of those mean specialized factories, supply chains, and
| labor. AKA higher prices unless it becomes the dominant option.
|
| Also, in larger systems higher pressures is a safety concern.
|
| None of that is a showstopper. But those are severe hindrances
| for a technology. A government can just fix every one of them,
| but then it would require government involvement.
| hinkley wrote:
| Ages ago there was a company that planned to convert Tyson
| Chicken carcasses into gasoline via depolymerization. Problem
| was that's a high pressure process, and they didn't take that
| seriously enough at the start. Leaks everywhere. Neighborhood
| smelled like burnt chicken feathers.
|
| They had to shut it down and redo all of the welding (I don't
| recall if they fixed existing welds or pulled the whole thing
| apart). Afterward they still got complains about the smell,
| swore they'd fixed the leaks and the neighbors were imagining
| it. I suspect some esters were coming out the end of the
| pipe, and/or the dust everywhere around the place was
| saturated from the pilot project and every time the wind
| shifted they got another nose full.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Getting rid of the chloro-flouro stuff makes lots of sense,
| but not producing any of it in the first place would be even
| better.
|
| Science doesn't work like that though. You can't study
| something until it does exist. However, we just don't study
| something long enough (we just can't think of everything to
| test against) to see what the true long tail effects will be.
|
| Yes, there's lots of things that would be amazing if we could
| un-invent them. But wishing won't make it so. We just need to
| be much more ammenable to the fact that somethings don't work
| and just _STOP_ using them rather than shrugging shoulders and
| kicking the proverbial cans down the road
| danans wrote:
| > The only drawback is CO2 refrigeration equipment has to
| operate at relatively high pressure, but this isn't a major
| problem
|
| So far it has been a problem for scale. There are very few
| consumer appliances that use CO2 as a refrigerant. I can think
| of 1 right now - and it's 3x the price of it's alternative that
| uses traditional refrigerant.
| hinkley wrote:
| I thought that the variable and linear compressors could use
| a smaller system because they're designed to run almost
| constantly instead of in bursts.
|
| They're also more efficient, but more expensive. So I wonder
| how much of the price differential is the refrigeration loop,
| and how much is using more expensive processes to offset the
| lower tonnage for the system.
| scythe wrote:
| There is one other refrigerant which very nearly checks all the
| boxes, but with a surprising structure: trifluoromethyl iodide.
| While non-combustible, it has an extremely short atmospheric
| lifetime of less than one month, giving it a GWP about half
| that of CO2 (and used in much smaller quantities).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifluoroiodomethane
|
| https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=93007...
| huqedato wrote:
| "...these gases are 2000x worse than CO2 and altogether this
| problem accounts for 6% of all global emissions." Says who ?
| Proof ?
| exp1orer wrote:
| There is a link to the IPCC report a few paragraphs down where
| you can read about this and other statistics to your heart's
| content.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why does the refrigerant need to be destroyed rather than reused
| in new air conditioners?
| bombcar wrote:
| R12 isn't used anymore, R134a is the new hotness.
|
| Or coldness I guess.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| R134a is now mostly replaced by R1234yf, at least in cars.
| lucioperca wrote:
| R32 in Aircons and R290 (propane) in monoblocks is on the
| rise in EU-Heatpumps.
| Brybry wrote:
| R-134a is being phased out as well. R-32 or R-454b are the
| new coldness.[1]
|
| I believe R-12 and R-22 were phased out because of their
| ozone depletion potential. In the states R-134a replaced
| those.
|
| R-134a was great! No more ozone layer damage!
|
| But its global warming potential is still too high[2] to
| comply with various climate change pacts and laws (I think
| California has a law that will limit refrigerant GWP to 750
| in 2023 [3] ).
|
| It's a bit weird for consumers though because if you're
| buying an air conditioner/heat pump right now then it's
| probably still R-134a.
|
| Who wants to buy hardware that will last for 15+ years but
| could cost a significant portion of the original unit price
| to refill in the event of a leak or installer error?
|
| [1] https://us-ac.com/usac-news/r410a-phasedown/
|
| [2] https://www.daikin.com/corporate/why_daikin/benefits/r-32
|
| [3] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Januar
| y%2...
| bombcar wrote:
| Now I have an Office Space like "R ... R ... are not going
| to be available anymore" voice running through my head.
| post_break wrote:
| Because of the chance of a leak. It's so much better to destroy
| it than risk it leaking again. The newest refrigerant is many
| times less harmful to the environment if it leaks.
| morninglight wrote:
| Why are all cars and trucks sold with air conditioning?
|
| Is it too much to roll down a window?
|
| Why are those who don't use air conditioning paying the
| "environmental refrigerant tax"?
|
| How much refrigerant would be saved if vehicle air conditioning
| was an additional expense?
| dylan604 wrote:
| What part of the world do you live in that tells you that you
| can make those types of decisions for people that live in other
| places in the world?
|
| Come to Texas and drive your car with no AC and just the
| windows rolled down. Please, I'll let you stay at my house for
| the duration of the experiment just to watch you bitch about
| the heat. I'll even record it for your socials so you can just
| show everyone how amazing your idea was.
| InitialBP wrote:
| One thing to realize is that "wind chill" also has a reverse
| effect that occurs when it's hot outside.
|
| As a human, with a normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees F.
| If the outside air temperature is 100 degrees F, then having
| your windows rolled down will actually increase the speed at
| which your body heats up to match ambient temperatures.
|
| This makes driving motorcycles in desert areas where air temp
| is > 100 degrees especially dangerous as it can quickly lead
| to dehydration and heat stroke.
| StillBored wrote:
| Much of that is dependent on the wet bulb temp, which is
| where some people are crying about high humidity at lower
| temps. But in most deserts the humidity also tends to be
| quite low, so the wet bulb temp can be fairly low at air
| temps quite a bit higher than 100F because sweat evaporates
| quickly.
|
| But yah, motorcycles at speed are another thing entirely
| because sweat/etc can just as easily blow off as evaporate.
| And so, you can't drink/sweat enough to be cooled. Combined
| with the need to wear protective gear which also tends to
| stop evaporation is a deadly combination. I ride mountain
| bikes in 100F+ weather and its another set of dangers, and
| one of the best feelings is dumping cold water through the
| vents in a helmet and feeling the burning hot water flush
| down your face and be replaced by the cool. But again, i'm
| basically carrying a significant quantity of <40F water
| intended to be sprayed on my already sweaty self, along
| with a 32F water i'm drinking not for hydration but as
| coolant.
| morninglight wrote:
| I have lived years w/o air conditioning in tropical West
| Africa and desert areas of North Africa. I have also spent
| plenty of time sitting in standstill traffic during my years
| in Florida and Louisiana. I have never used air conditioning.
| If you have a valid medical need for a/c, you could be
| accommodated. However, if you just want to shutoff the
| outside world by rolling up the windows, then perhaps you
| should be the one paying for that luxury.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Rolling down windows doesn't work. I require A/C, it's not
| something I'll give up.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't remember the exact threshold (It is definitely the
| case, over 98 degrees Fahrenheit -Body temperature, but that
| seems high), where moving air no longer cools you. I think
| that humidity can bring that threshold waaaayyyy down.
|
| I used to live in Maryland. The summers there are _brutal_.
| On hot days, rolling down the window is like having a hair
| dryer pointed at your face.
|
| I was talking with a friend of mine in Delhi, a couple of
| weeks back, when they were having the heat wave.
|
| It's no joke. People are dropping dead at their workstations.
| samatman wrote:
| The threshold is in fact higher than body temperature for
| dry air. The point below which air can't cool anything is
| the wet bulb temperature, and a wet bulb above body
| temperature is eventually fatal.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| When I lived in Morocco, they had this Bedouin tribe,
| called the "Behr-Behr."
|
| They were known as "The Blue Nomads." because their skin
| was often tinged blue, from the dye on the heavy wool
| robes they wore.
|
| In the desert, wool actually keeps you cooler.
| samatman wrote:
| In Arabic Bahdawi means "desert dweller", while in
| English Bedouin refers more specifically to Arab desert
| dwellers.
|
| The people you're talking about are Amazigh, also known
| as Berbers, and from the indigo, specifically Tuareg.
|
| I'm sure they were referred to as "bedouin" and it isn't
| wrong in context.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Thanks!
| oofnik wrote:
| Sitting in standstill traffic in >30degC climates is more than
| an inconvenience; it is an acute health risk. Please consider
| the fact that a significant proportion of humans live in
| tropical or desert climates which would be otherwise
| uninhabitable without air conditioning technology.
| mordae wrote:
| OTOH We've had some new trams with A/C that doesn't really
| measure up and you cannot open the windows. Same with trains.
|
| Above 30degC it's actually more comfortable to just ventilate
| the train instead of A/C.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Yeah, the trams in my city generally are not designed to
| cool down more than 5degC from outside temperature.
| StillBored wrote:
| Is it actual AC or swamp coolers/evaporative cooler?
| Usually as I mentioned elsewhere the licensing
| requirements (at least in the US) for actual AC systems
| usually involve a portion on computing heat load/etc in
| order to size a system.
|
| Although, I'm betting the engineering side of the tram
| probably avoids needing anything other than the
| equivalent of the US PE/etc. Its probably a bit tricky
| because the needs of being able to load/unload people
| quickly also probably tend to dump a lot of hot air into
| the car. Either way though, busses, cars, trains all tend
| to do ok in hot climates because they have massively
| oversized AC systems and can move a lot of air relative
| to the enclosed space.
|
| Returning to my original point, I'm betting your trams
| don't actually have AC, from your description I might
| guess they have some kind of evaporative cooler.
| mypalmike wrote:
| Are there really many places where AC enabled humans to move
| into a region of the globe where they never lived before?
| ars wrote:
| This has been studied - driving on the freeway with the window
| open adds more air resistance than the energy used to run an
| A/C.
|
| An A/C is better for the environment.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| This comment is being downvoted, and with reason.
|
| But in a decade or so, it will be the prevailing opinion. Some
| czar of the environment will go around deciding who gets AC,
| and telling others "You don't _need_ AC ". (Generally, this is
| decided by campaign donations and party support.)
|
| Of course there is some negligible environmental impact that
| will come out in a college paper some point. But otherwise, the
| only thing people will notice is the rise in deaths of the
| elderly.
|
| But this is a small price to pay. The environment is our god,
| and it demands sacrifice.
| ajkjk wrote:
| This caused me to google some refrigerants mentioned in the
| comments, and I gotta say, reading about auto techs' opinions on
| different refrigerants is... weirdly interesting:
| https://www.autoserviceprofessional.com/articles/7868-real-w...
| themitigating wrote:
| It's not a case of opinion. One is better or worse for each
| relevant attribute, like thermal efficiency, cost, dangers,
| enviornmental concern, lifespan, etc
|
| I often hear that r12 cools better but that's not true at all
| according to thus Perdue study. There may be other factors
| though.
|
| https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D...
| kube-system wrote:
| > I often hear that r12 cools better
|
| I think that came about as a result of people filling old R12
| systems with R134A and then complaining that it didn't work
| as well as before, back in the 90s.
| stevekrouse wrote:
| Refrigerants are this huge elephant in the room in climate
| change. Everybody knows there a main issue but almost nobody is
| addressing them. They're not easy nor sexy. Makes this work all
| the more critical. Go Louis go!
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