A newer ‘climate-friendly’ refrigerant used in car air conditioning systems, may already be a significant, and possibly dominant, source of a ‘forever chemical’ pollutant across Europe, according to a new University of Bristol-led study.
A newer ‘climate-friendly’ refrigerant used in car air conditioning systems, may already be a significant, and possibly dominant, source of a ‘forever chemical’ pollutant across Europe, according to a new University of Bristol-led study.
Introduced to meet stringent environmental regulations, HFO-1234yf has replaced the older refrigerant HFC-134a, a potent greenhouse gas known for its contribution to climate change, now widely used in vehicle air-conditioning systems. However, findings published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters suggest that HFO-1234yf, which is in almost all new cars manufactured globally since 2017, is significantly contributing to increasing levels of the “forever chemical” trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) across Europe.
Both substances break down in the atmosphere and can form TFA, a highly persistent compound that belongs to the broader group of PFAS (‘forever chemicals’). TFA is increasingly being detected in water, plants, food, and even human samples.
To investigate how emissions of HFC-134a and HFO-1234yf break down in the atmosphere and contribute to the formation of TFA, the researchers used a global tropospheric chemistry transport model. The model simulates emissions of chemical species, their atmospheric transport, the chemical reactions that govern their fate and the loss processes, like deposition, that remove their products from the atmosphere.
Read More: University of Bristol
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