How much refrigerant is left when we scrap an air conditioner (AC), cold store plant or chiller, and how much recovery can we assume under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tables?
IPCC Table 7.9 gives the share of charge still inside at disposal: under 80 percent for residential and commercial air conditioning including heat pumps, 80 to 100 for chillers, 50 to 100 for industrial refrigeration. Recovery runs from 0 up to 80, 95 and 90 percent. Equation 7.14 is charge x share left x (1 minus recovery).
Equation 7.14
Emissions at end of life = original charge of the system x p / 100 x (1 minus recovery efficiency / 100), where p is the residual charge as a percentage of the full charge and the recovery efficiency is the ratio of recovered gas to the gas in the system. Table 7.9 gives ranges for both, by equipment type.
Table 7.9 ranges
Residual charge (p), then recovery efficiency, both in percent:
- Domestic refrigeration: under 80; 0 to 70
- Stand-alone commercial units: under 80; 0 to 70
- Medium and large commercial refrigeration: 50 to 100; 0 to 70
- Transport refrigeration: under 50; 0 to 70
- Industrial refrigeration, including food processing and cold storage: 50 to 100; 0 to 90
- Chillers: 80 to 100; 0 to 95
- Residential and commercial air conditioning, including heat pumps: under 80; 0 to 80
- Mobile air conditioning: under 50; 0 to 50
What the table footnotes say
The recovery column footnote says "The lower threshold (0%) highlights that there is no recovery in some countries." The footnotes that say the lower end is for developed countries and the upper end for developing countries are attached to the lifetime and operating emission columns, not to these two columns, so they do not tell you which end to pick for residual charge or recovery. Pick from the range with the evidence you hold and write the reason down.
How this fits our scrapping page
Our page on scrapping an AC or chiller assumes the full nameplate charge when the unit was topped up recently and no recovery without a record. For a chiller that is the top of the 80 to 100 percent band. If you have no top-up history, the Table 7.9 band says a chiller may hold as little as 80 percent. Either way, recovery counts only with a technician's note, cylinder weights or a reclaimer's receipt.
A 250 kilogram chiller and a 2.5 kilogram residential air conditioner
- Chiller, 80 to 100 percent left: 200 to 250 kilograms still inside
- No recovery record: 200 to 250 kilograms emitted
- With 85 percent recovery documented: 200 x 0.15 = 30 to 250 x 0.15 = 37.5 kilograms emitted
- Residential air conditioner, under 80 percent left: 2.5 x 0.80 = up to 2.0 kilograms inside
- With recovery at the 80 percent top of the range: 2.0 x 0.20 = 0.4 kilograms emitted
The 250 and 2.5 kilograms are examples, chosen to differ from the units on our scrapping page. Multiply kilograms by the gas's global warming potential in your chosen report for carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into dated records. It does not read recovery notes or equipment nameplates, so keep those papers yourself and add the kilograms to your inventory.
- Refrigerant recovery when scrapping an air conditioner or chiller
- Refrigerant leakage with no top-up records
- Free calculators
Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 3 Chapter 7 (Section 7.5, Equation 7.14, Table 7.9)
Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Ranges are as printed in Table 7.9 of the 2006 Guidelines.