New European regulation 517/2014 on fluorinated greenhouse gases

From 01/01/2015 the aforementioned regulation came into force, which effectively repeals and largely replaces the European regulation 842/2006.

This regulation acted as a guideline for the transposition of the member states of Europe of the actions to be implemented in terms of control and verification of refrigerant leaks.

The regulation was also applied to systems containing greenhouse effect refrigerants, starting from 3 kilograms of charge on traditional systems, and from 6 kilograms of charge in the case of systems built and certified as hermetic.

This regulation covered all aspects of production, storage, marketing, control systems, peculiarities of the certifying bodies, obligations of operators and certified companies that physically provided a verification and control service, compilation of the register, frequency and verification methods, sanctions.

With the introduction of the European regulation 517/2014, the verification criteria are modified, the global warming potentials GWP of the refrigerant contained in the system will be considered, compared with the GWP of CO2, the reference unit to be considered will be the ton CO2 equivalent, with the effect starting from 2016, that some systems containing refrigerants having a greater impact on the greenhouse effect, will have to be verified even if containing less than 3 kilograms, other systems that required only one annual verification, will be able to pass to more annual verifications .

This regulation also includes the regulation of the data that must be collected and stored in the plant register (plant booklet), the reference regulations to follow, plant verification data.

In order to make this register correspond to the legal requirements, Omi updates it, if it has been issued, with a new one.

Gianluca Bugatto

Technical Assistance Manager

OMI Srl