# Why is HFC-23 a concern at HCFC-22 plants?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/hfc-23-from-hcfc-22-production

Making HCFC-22 refrigerant produces HFC-23 as a by-product, a gas with a 100-year GWP of 14,600 under IPCC AR6. Venting even small amounts gives a large Scope 1 figure. Plants capture and destroy it in a thermal oxidiser; report generated, destroyed and vented quantities.

## What to record

- HCFC-22 produced.
- HFC-23 generated, from measurement or the plant's own ratio.
- HFC-23 destroyed, with oxidiser running hours.
- HFC-23 vented or stored.

## Why the hours matter

When the oxidiser is down, by-product gas may be vented. A few days of venting can exceed a year of all other plant emissions, so log every outage.

## Worked example (illustrative figures)

- HFC-23 vented in a year: 2 tonnes.
- 2 × 14,600 = 29,200 tonnes CO2e in Scope 1.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads bills, fuel invoices and production records into dated, fingerprinted records, so the figure you send a buyer can be traced to its documents.

- [Does R22 count in Scope 1](https://senseible.earth/answers/does-r22-count-in-scope-1)
- [HSN codes for refrigerants](https://senseible.earth/answers/hsn-codes-for-refrigerant-gases)
- [Hydrofluoric acid plant](https://senseible.earth/answers/hydrofluoric-acid-plant-emissions-per-tonne)

Sources: [IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/), [IPCC AR6 Working Group I](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/), [Ozone Cell, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change](https://www.ozonecell.nic.in)

Last reviewed 2026-10-22.