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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

You mention that you destroy the captured refrigerants. Could you elaborate more on how do you accomplish this?

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...

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.

If the temperature and ratios are right on the money, you end up blowing PCDD, PCDF, PCNs and PCBs out the Kiln Exhaust

Your bio suggests you know more about the chemical details than I do, but we do have

1. A trial burn done by an independent lab to make sure that under normal operating conditions, when destroying refrigerant the levels of those + other chemicals are below certain thresholds

2. automatic monitoring and shutoff mechanisms if the kiln deviates from normal conditions

I’m glad you have the safeguards. A lot of people don’t know to even be aware. Almost all the emissions of the chemicals I mentioned are from accidental creation now (mostly industrial fires and chemical waste incineration)

Whoa, that's great. Also, thanks for that reference I have something new to read later on :)

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