Five Simple Steps to Reduce Your Refrigerant Leak Rate
The benefits of reducing refrigerant gas leaks go far beyond reducing environmental harm or avoiding potential safety issues. With the supermarket industry’s minuscule profit margins, reducing costs can be more powerful for the bottom line than increasing sales, and there are few cost line items as ripe for improvement as refrigerant leaks.
A successful leak reduction program has at least five parts: leak repair, leak detection, leak prevention, measuring/tracking performance, and goal setting. These five parts work together to address refrigerant leaks from all angles and can enhance profits through savings on operating expenses. Once you have the basics down, there are many opportunities to add elements to the plan .
1) Leak Repair
Those wanting to reduce refrigerant leaks may find this first point too obvious: to leak less, you must repair your leaks. The most over-used phrase in refrigerant management is, “Of course, we repair all leaks.” Yet according to the EPA, the typical supermarket in this country leaks about 1,000 pounds of refrigerant annually.1
What’s wrong with this picture? Most leaks do eventually get repaired, but when? How often are repairs postponed until a store closes, until a service technician can fit the repair into their schedule, or until the leak gets so bad that the cases won’t hold their set temperature? Are repairs only being done once the leak rate exceeds the leak repair threshold in the EPA’s refrigerant regulations? Are refrigerant appliances being shut down or valved off when repairs cannot happen immediately? Making headway in leak reduction and cost savings depends on taking a close look at your answers to these questions.
The best of the best when it comes to leak rates understand this already. MSA’s team has found that supermarket companies with a leak rate below 10% generally have a “no leak tolerance” policy. That means repairing every leak immediately. It doesn’t matter if it’s lunchtime and the store is packed. It doesn’t matter if the leak is in an underground pipe. Immediately means immediately. It is almost impossible to sell enough product from any display case that is leaking to offset the cost of postponing a repair.
2) Leak Detection
Right on the heels of leak repair, and working hand-in-hand with it, is leak detection. If the first warning of a leak is when the food gets too warm in a display case, too much refrigerant has already leaked. The faster a leak is detected, the sooner it can be repaired. Early detection and subsequent repair can help prevent a leak from reaching the point where case temperature can’t be maintained, potentially resulting in refrigeration failure and product loss.
There are multiple leak detection options, ranging from sophisticated automatic leak detection systems to small portable leak detectors. Stores with high leak rates may choose to implement a period of monthly leak inspections until the leak rate is brought under control. After that, quarterly inspections may be sufficient for early detection. Yes, inspections cost money, but they can pay for themselves in reduced refrigerant costs.
Some supermarket companies with impressively low leak rates mandate that every leak repair event end with a store “walk-through” with a leak detector before the service technician leaves the store. The walk-through can usually be completed while the technician is waiting for the repaired equipment to return to normal operating conditions before completing the “follow-up verification test” under the EPA’s Section 608 regulations.2
3) Leak Prevention
Most companies will see a significant improvement in leak rates with a no-leak-tolerance policy and a systematic approach to leak detection and repair. But if that’s where the plan stops, they are missing out on the most significant way to reduce environmentally harmful and expensive refrigerant leaks: refrigeration technology that is designed with leak prevention in mind.
Secondary systems, for example, use less refrigerant, so there is less refrigerant to leak. The smaller refrigerant charge is confined to the machine room, where leaks can be detected and repaired faster. In addition to being characterized by low leak rates in general, secondary systems also maintain low leak rates for a longer period after installation. Loop piping, reducing the number of piping joints, and valve caps are other examples of ways to prevent leaks within the equipment.
4) Measuring / Tracking Performance
In addition to leak repair, leak detection, and leak prevention, some food retailers are beginning to set annual refrigerant-related goals and measure performance. They adhere to the adage that you can’t improve something that you don’t measure.
The EPA’s GreenChill Partners are a good example of the value of the “measure – set goals – measure again” philosophy. The EPA reports that the national average leak rate for supermarkets is an estimated 25%1, while GreenChill partners have an average leak rate of around 12-13% (based on charge size and pounds of refrigerant leaked).3 Savings from these efforts have been measured in millions of dollars. According to the EPA, GreenChill partners avoided spending $134 million in replacement costs in 2023 and have reported estimated annual savings totaling $899 million between 2013 and 2023.4
There are a multitude of performance factors related to refrigeration that can be measured, but the following four are commonly used to evaluate success:
Company-wide Annual Leak Rate
What is the leak rate for all refrigeration and air conditioning equipment in all stores across the enterprise for the calendar year? The answer to this question is valuable for leak reduction efforts. The metric is comprised of the amount of refrigerant in all refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment divided by the amount of refrigerant leaked from that equipment in the calendar year.
Because every supermarket in the country already records how much refrigerant is in each store’s refrigeration and air conditioning equipment and how much refrigerant is leaked from that equipment, it shouldn’t be difficult to put the pieces in place to do this calculation.
Pounds of Refrigerant Leaked per Store
Looking at the pounds of refrigerant leaked per store can help prioritize investments in leak reduction activities. For instance, a grocer might have two stores with a 70% leak rate, but one store is leaking 3,000 pounds of refrigerant, and the other is leaking 300. Prioritizing the store that is leaking 3,000 pounds of refrigerant will likely yield the biggest cost-saving benefit.
Leak Repair Response Time
Leak repair response time is a measure of how fast technicians respond to a leak repair request. With an automatic leak detection system in place, stores can measure the time between the alarm and the service technician’s response. “Response” can be defined in several ways, including the arrival of the tech at the store, triaging the leak by phone, or when the contractor deploys a technician to the store. Some companies break alarms into categories like leak size, or leak location, then measure the response time for each category. Others just measure the average time from year to year and then try to improve it.
Time to Repair Leaks
The average time to repair a leak is a similar measurement to the leak repair response time. Be prepared for a service contractor to argue that this measure is unfair because different types of leaks require more or less time to repair. The point is to look at the annual average across the company, which will likely include multiple contractors. That way, the measurement shows the success of the processes in place, rather than the repair time for individual events that may not be comparable.
5) Set Goals
After establishing measuring protocols, the next step is to set goals for improvement. Ask, “What do we want to achieve?” Maybe constant improvement is the priority. If that’s the case, a 10% improvement in leak rate or 10% reduction in pounds of refrigerant leaked may be achievable on an annual basis. Of course, that depends on the starting point. If the corporate-wide annual leak rate is 50%, reducing that by 20-25% in one year may be feasible. If the starting leak rate is below 12%, a 10% reduction may be a more realistic goal.
If the goal is reducing the leak rate to a specific number, you may wish to start with determining an achievable timeframe to reach that number and then the level of improvement needed each year to achieve it. If the goal is to be among the industry’s best, consider aiming for a corporate-wide annual leak rate below 10%.
There is currently a lack of industry-wide data on response time and time to repair, making it difficult to pinpoint a goal for these performance factors.
Refrigerant Leak Management is Good Business
Taking a systematic approach to refrigerant leak management is about more than simply reducing leaks. It’s good business management. Reducing refrigerant leaks results in a better bottom line. A fully charged system will operate more efficiently than one with a depleted charge. And keeping the refrigerant gases contained means less frequent and lower amounts of purchased refrigerant gases are needed, saving even more money! As an added perk, reducing refrigerant gas emissions is beneficial to the environment and the safety of those working around refrigerant-containing appliances.
SOURCES
- https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2013-12/documents/gc_preventativemaintenance_20130913.pdf
- https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-82/subpart-F
- https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-09/GreenChill-Keeping-Cool-for-15-Years-2022_1.pdf
Recommended for You
