Woodcliff Lake, NJ – November 27, 2023 – The HVACR industry has loads of pressure on it to better manage refrigerant shortages thanks to the U.S. phasing down HFC product per the AIM Act. Yet, the amount of reclaimed refrigerant doesn’t meet the demand as only 1.6% of sold HFCs in 2020 were recycled and thus, ready to be reused. There is a silver lining, however: A lot of refrigerant reclaimers aren’t charging for mixed refrigerants anymore, which may in turn, mean an opportunity for HVAC contractors to make more money. They just have to recover the refrigerant in the first place.
“Now that there are greater economics relative to the value of the recovered refrigerant, many of the financial barriers — including fees — have been removed, so contractors can turn recovery activities into a profit center and not a cost,” said Kate Houghton, vice president of sales and marketing at Hudson Technologies Co.
“For example, contractors should significantly benefit from Hudson’s pay-for-all refrigerants approach, which is a more profitable buyback program than in years past.” And while contractors may have been charged a fee for mixed refrigerants in the past, it’s important for them to know that every pound of recovered refrigerant has value now, and they should not pay disposal fees anymore, said Houghton. “We pay for mixed refrigerants and have no disposal fees,” she said. “We have sophisticated fractional distillation that allows us to separate nearly all mixed refrigerants that we receive, allowing Hudson to provide payment to contractors even for low purity refrigerants.”
The recovery/reclaim process at Hudson Technologies is also simple and easy, said Houghton, as the company provides all the paperwork and makes pick-up arrangements for contractors.
“Once we receive a contractor’s cylinders, we refurbish and maintain them and return them empty, in hydro test date, cylinders within two business days of receipt to ensure contractors have cylinders to continue to perform recovery work,” she said. “This helps contractors avoid having to carry extra cylinders in their fleet. In addition, Hudson pays for the recovered refrigerant and all the shipping costs of the two-way freight. So hopefully we are achieving our goal of making everything easy and pay for all recovered gas so that the contractor wants to perform more recoveries.”
In addition, Hudson takes its proprietary reclamation equipment into the field to do recoveries and system remediation and retrofit work. This facilitates contractors and end users maximizing recovery and reclamation of refrigerant and preservation of system charges, while also helping restore energy efficiency and optimal system performance, said Houghton. The company also performs all types of refrigerant management services, including banking and cylinder maintenance services.
Learn more from the ACHR News HVAC Minute, here.
