Q287. How does one handle the calculation of blends such as R-410A? Do we calculate on the basis of the components, e.g., HFC-125 and HFC-32?

 

A287. Yes, you calculate the CO₂ equivalent of an HFC blend by breaking out the mass of the blend into the masses of its component HFCs, converting the mass of each of those HFCs into CO₂ equivalents, and then adding together the CO₂ equivalents of all components.

 For example, if you imported 20 metric tons of R-410A (composed of 50% HFC-125 and 50% HFC-32 by weight), you would break out the 20 metric tons into 10 metric tons of HFC-125 and 10 metric tons of HFC-32. You would then convert each of those masses into CO₂ equivalents: 35,000 metric tons CO₂e for the 10 metric tons of HFC-125 and 6,750 metric tons CO₂e for the 10 metric tons of HFC-32. You would then add these together to get the CO₂ equivalents of the blend: 41,750 metric tons CO₂e in this example.