Hacker News Reader

Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Banning harmful substances isn't luddism. What do you think luddism is? What is the harm of this ban?

You know why these substances exist right? Because the prior substances were cutting a hole in the ozone layer. And at the time the new-then substances weren't proven bad yet.

And those ozone eating substances themselves came about because the prior refrigerants were more flammable or poisonous and the then-new substances were not yet proven bad.

It's an endless game of whack-a-mole.

> You know why these substances exist right? Because the prior substances were cutting a hole in the ozone layer.

Refrigeration may end up back where it originally started (before freon even), using ammonia. Ammonia is somewhat dangerous on a local level (you don't want an ammonia leak in your house..) but AFAIK it doesn't eat up ozone and the local hazard is something that can be mitigated with the right sort of product design.

I don't think we'll see ammonia used in domestic refrigeration. Industrial use, sure.

I think what we'll see for domestic refrigerants (refrigerators, AC, heat pumps) is hydrocarbons like propane or butane (already a reality for refrigerators in most of the world), and in some cases CO2.

i went to a hotel with an ammonia refrigerator in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago

Yeah, ammonia is very common in industrial refrigeration, especially big specialized systems that need tons and tons of refrigerant, as illustrated by this famous accident in which 30,000 lb. of the stuff was released:

https://www.csb.gov/millard-refrigerated-services-ammonia-re...

this was a 60-liter fridge with 117 grams of ammonia in it in the kitchen of the hotel suite

> Ammonia is somewhat dangerous on a local level

Like saying that the Ohio train disaster may cause lung irritation, that quite undersells the problem.

Ammonia refrigeration is inherently dangerous and has been banned from domestic refrigerators for a long time for good reason. Some regulations are written in blood.

I think it could be possible to use ammonia in domestic refrigerators safely if appropriate measures were taken. Particularly, require that refrigerators be installed with vent pipes leading from a tamper-resistant enclosure straight to the outside. Such vents would be similar to those used in waste plumbing to protect people from toxic sewer gasses like hydrogen sulfide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drain-waste-vent_system

But jabl is probably right and something like propane would make more sense.

I don't think any of this is alarming. Nor a reason we should stop trying to solve new problems as we learn of them.

I'd rather be exposed to the known-known of propane refrigeration in my consumer devices (car, window unit, refrigerator, mini-split, etc) than risk exposure poorly understood chemicals to reduce the chances of a refrigerant fire from one tiny decimal per capita per lifetime to a slightly smaller tiny decimal per capita per lifetime.

It sounds like an endless march of gradual forward progress, since each generation of refrigerants has been less destructive that the one before.

the refrigerants that will still be allowed are literally the ones used in the very first vapor-compression refrigerators in the 19th century: blends of light alkanes, called 'chimogene' at the time; see us patent 87,084 from the year 01869 for example

these (and sulfur dioxide) are what cfcs were invented to replace because they were dangerously inflammable

if your 'endless march of gradual forward progress' ends up where it started after a century and a half of 'progress' i really question your definition of 'forward'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com