Fire extinguishers: A case study of CFC replacements

Abstract

In some well-known TEWI (total equivalent warming impact) analyses of CFC alternatives, global warmer emissions in production have not been considered. The authors show that TEWI can be affected significantly by these production emissions, which suggests they should be considered in some TEWI analyses. The paper describes a TEWI analysis for one production sequence, that which leads from chloroform to tetrafluoroethylene and thence to HFC-227ea, a fire extinguishing agent. Numerous other commercial products stem from this sequence as well, including refrigerants, polymers and surfactants—these are summarised in the paper. Particular emphasis is placed on describing the production sequence and its global warming parameters to show that these can indeed be estimated from published information. The TEWI profile is presented at the close.