The EPA amendments to Section 608 of the Clean Air Act are scheduled to become effective March 14, 2005 and will impact virtually all sectors that use refrigerants for comfort cooling, commercial refrigeration, industrial process refrigeration or federally owned systems. Included are appliances that contain CFC or HCFC refrigerant charges in excess of 50 pounds, along with HFC blends that contain any kind of ozone-depleting component, said Mark Harbin, ESS's refrigerant software and compliance services manager.

Most of the rules changes deal with confirmation and clarification of existing requirements. However, the amendment does include a section that addresses "annualized" and "rolling average" leak rate calculations.

"Historically, the leak rate calculation that has been used by equipment (appliance) owners and operators has been modeled after the annualized method used in the EPA and Chemical Manufacturers' Association (CMA) guide - Compliance Guidance for Industrial Process Refrigeration Leak Repair Regulations Under Section 608 of the Clean Air Act," said Harbin. "While the annualized method has been used for many years by most facilities, another method known as 'rolling average' was discussed in the CMA guide, but never adopted. The rolling average amendment gives owners and operators a second option for calculating leak rates."