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Environmentally friendly destruction of fluorinated products and Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS)

Principles

Fluorinated products are famous for their high stability and excellent properties and quality. These advantages during usage turn to disadvantage when application comes to an end. To prevent those stabile products to become waste that never will disappear and contaminate the environment for a very long time it needs environmentally friendly recycling systems. Our environment can be better protected if material loops modelled on nature are created and the subsequent recycling of new products is already ensured when latter are introduced. Normal incineration should be avoided. First this was done very successfully on fluorinated refrigerants as CFCs and other fluorinated gases as SF6.

For products, which cannot be reconditioned into new products or, for example, are no longer allowed to be reconditioned like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) other environmentally friendly processes are called for. Basically the aim has to be to achieve destruction of those products and recover the valuable compounds for further usage. Harmful new wastes and poisonous off-gases must be avoided.

With the reactor cracking process ODS substances are used as feed stock and are transformed into hydrofluoric acid and hydrochloric acid for sale.

The process is recommended by the "Technical Advisory Committee on ODS Destruction Technologies" of the United Nations and by Greenpeace Germany for the destruction of CFCs. So far, this is the only process that permits decomposition products such as hydrogen fluorine and hydrogen chlorine to be recycled without producing solid waste.