What is the Refrigerant in my AC?

HAve you ever wondered how your AC cools your home? Your AC uses refrigerant to help cool your home. The way the air conditioner works is to grab the warm air from your home, cools it, and pumps it back in. Your compressor compresses the cold refrigerant gas causing its pressure to rise. This process makes the refrigerant very hot. This hot refrigerant gas now moves through the coils which act to lower its temperature and turn it into liquid. Next, the liquid refrigerant moves through an expansion valve where it cools down and evaporates as a gas. The cold refrigerant gas is now sent through another set of coils allowing the gas to absorb the heat and lower the rooms temperature. A fan moves the warm air over the cold refrigerant filled coils which allows them to absorb the heat from it as it changes from a liquid to a gas. The process continues where the refrigerant is changed from a gas to a liquid and then back to a gas again in order to keep the cooling process. That is the basic process of cooling for your AC. If your system was manufactured before 2010, it is using the refrigerant called R-22. R-22 has chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) which been known to contribute to ozone depletion so the EPA is working to phase its use out. Since 2010, R-22 is not allowed to be manufactured and used in new systems. R-22 is not allowed to be pumped back into the atmosphere so it has to be recycled and reclaimed for use in the existing system. R-410A is a blend of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that does not contribute to depletion of the ozone layer but can contribute to global warming. 410A is also known as Puron and is what is in all your AC units will run on in 2010 and on. The 410A is free of chlorine and runs on the same process that the R-22 did. Eventually R-22 will be completely phased out and it will be better for the environment. The newer ACs you will get to replace the old ones are way more efficient so you are saving energy and money with a new system. Bartlett Heating and Air gives free installation estimates so call us today!