Hacker News Reader

Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

> r132a, a common refrigerant

Are you thinking R134A? IIRC, R132A theoretically exists but nobody makes it. And R134A is an automotive refrigerant. Most residential systems in the last 10 years likely use R410A (which is itself a mixture of R32 and R125). That is getting phased out and generally replaced with plain R32, as far as I know.

View on HN

R32 is also on its way out, and new units here in Europe tend to come with R290 (propane)

I have heard a lot about R290 but at least in the US, I am not seeing much of a push to go there. R32 is an A2L refrigerant and (according to the article) isn't affected by the PFAS ban. In the US at least it looks like the main choice for the future, at least in the near term.

That's interesting, a had an AC unit installed 2 years ago (in Europe), and then many units were marketed as using the new R32 instead of the traditional R410A.

Now that I look at the website of the company that did the installation, it seems all their AC models now use R32.

Then why are they banning R134A as the article says?

Glaxosmithkline loves it when they do this, it allows them to create a new propellant forumlation, and then that allows them to put basic asthma medication back on patent.

And the current R134a patents are just set to expire. Inhalers which should cost $5/ea are set to be $90/ea again.

This is the same thing they did when CFC were banned and they switched from CFC to R134a. This is a medication that should have been off patent decades ago, but due to this "trick", it almost certainly never will be.

Sorry, 134a yes

Reply on news.ycombinator.com