Those dates were the focus of discussion in December, when parties to the Montreal Protocol met in Vienna, Austria. However, the ozone depletion potential cap was slightly reduced from 3.1 to 2.8 percent, but sufficient supplies of HCFCs will be available. At the group's annual meeting recently in Naples, FL, Robert Novello, chairman of the 1996 ARI Board of Directors, emphasized the importance of maintaining the current phaseout schedule. International negotiators have already agreed that HCFCs should be produced well into the next century. Active efforts are under way to test new refrigerants in the quest for the best HCFC replacements, and several promising candidates have emerged.
Customers can expect to see alternatives introduced into the marketplace in the next several years.
The AREP Technical Committee, which conducts tests and shares data, has been expanded to include refrigerant producers, as well as equipment manufacturers. With demand building for a variety of reclaimed refrigerants, ARI is establishing a new certification program to verify the capabilities of laboratories testing refrigerants to ARI Standard 700. The names and addresses of all certified laboratories, listing the refrigerants each is certified to test, will be published this spring in an ARI Directory of Certified Testing Laboratories. Equipment owners and manufacturers have come a long way from just a few years ago when refrigerants were freely vented into the atmosphere during servicing. Stiff penalties for violations, coupled with new equipment and servicing complexities, are challenging the industry as never before.