Short-lived commercial chemicals can produce long-lived products in the environment

What is it about?

Many of the chemicals in our day-to-day lives are emitted into the atmosphere. Chemicals that are slowly leaking from our fridges, air conditioners, insulation materials, etc. What happens to them next? Most of the time they are destroyed by the OH radical, otherwise known as the detergent of the atmosphere. But many compounds in daily use also react with ozone, which can have some surprising consequences, and could lead to the production of chemicals that are currently banned because of their extremely high global warming potential (GWP).

Featured Image

Photo by Vadim Babenko on Unsplash

Photo by Vadim Babenko on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This work is the first to identify reactions of ozone as an atmospheric source of trifluoromethane, otherwise known as Freon 23, a molecule that lives for approximately 270 years in the atmosphere. The compounds affected are among the current generation of commercial refrigerants, the hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs), which are seeing increasing use. This relates to a combination of their material properties and their low calculated GWP. However, these calculations do not take into account this newly discovered chemistry, which increases GWPs severalfold in some cases. It is notable that not all HFOs produce Freon 23, and this work can therefore help to inform decisions on which refrigerants enter large-scale usage.

Perspectives