A-Gas to enter refrigerant destruction business in Australia and New Zealand

Refrigerant specialist A-Gas will soon launch an end-of-life refrigerant destruction facility serving Australia and New Zealand, based on the latest version of its proprietary PyroPlas technology that uses an argon plasma arc to destroy fluorocarbons and other waste products with a claimed minimum efficiency of 99.9999 per cent.

The new-generation PyroPlas units that will be deployed in the Asia Pacific region have been developed by A-Gas after it acquired the company that invented the technology in 2021.

A-Gas group commercial director Louise McCann described the latest PyroPlas units as offering “the most complete refrigerant management capability in the world”.

A-Gas has already recruited new staff for the project and says it will design and build the new PyroPlas units locally, to meet the needs of customers in Australia and New Zealand.

The new units are said to have a wider range of destruction capabilities than previously – A-Gas has been operating PyroPlas tech in the United States for more than a decade, in which time it has destroyed hundreds of tonnes of end-of-life refrigerant – and the latest generation is capable of safely destroying halons, HFCs, flammables and mixtures of different refrigerants.

PyroPlas is a patented system that is certified by the United Nations Environment Program’s Technology and Economic Assessment Panel as an environmentally safe and effective solution for the disposal of ozone-depleting substances and synthetic greenhouse gases.

Refrigerant Reclaim Australia (RRA) general manager Kylie Farrelley told SightGlass that A-Gas is building this facility independently of RRA, although RRA “may be able to contract A-Gas to destroy refrigerant in the future.”

Australia’s refrigerant stewardship scheme operator currently has two sites nationally where it can send refrigerant for safe destruction.

“We currently have plenty of capacity to destroy current levels of recovered refrigerant with plenty of room to grow,” said Ms Farrelley, who welcomed the new A-Gas facility as a “safety net” in case existing facilities were offline as well as the introduction of increased competition in the region’s refrigerant destruction industry.