Change of Refrigerants

[KARL]

In the course of adopting ozone friendly refrigerants, old ones are being phased out and replaced by others. Meanwhile lots of systems continue functioning perfectly well with the old type of refrigerant sealed within them. Let us say that a piece of equipment includes a refrigeration cycle using the old refrigerant and that this system now fails in some way. I know it is acceptable to repair and recharge with old-type refrigerant, but what about converting the equipment ? I expect the compressor will need to be changed but are the old compressor and evaporator elements usable with the new refrigerant ? If they are fully accessible (and the manufacturer now has the same equipment fully converted to new refrigerant) then this would be possible. In many cases this will be economical as opposed to scrapping the equipment and completely replacing it.

[buildersmate]

Old refridgerants are used to recharge old, leaky but otherwise perfectly good old fridges. I don't see the point of changing the compressor etc. on an old fridge just to change the refrigerant - apart from the environmental reason. Only when the old equipment dies it is scrapped, the refrigerant disposed of without leaking it into the atmosphere - there will be old-style fridges around for several decades yet.
Its taken a mammoth action by Government to get the changes we have got - trying to force renewal of other bits of the kit is surely a non-starter - unless it was legislated for through tax - then it would be economical.

[KARL]

It appears the motive for my question is misunderstood, possibly through my not wording sufficiently clearly. I am curious about what difference there is between systems working on different refrigerants. If there was no hardware difference then the refrigerants would be directly interchangeable - which they are not. I am not simply looking at ordinary fridges where the compressor and evaporator elements are delibertely inaccessible and not replaceable - compulsory obsolescence. There are fridges where they are replaceable and other equipment where the refrigeration part forms only a small component of the whole assembly where everything is accessible and the only change is the hardware forming the cycle - in all of these it is eminently feasible to change whatever needs to be changed. The question is in essence, which hardware parts must be different for use of different refrigerants. This is one for those who know refrigeration equipment well.

[solera]

You will need to check with the refrigerant manufacturer in respect of compatability of any seals utilised in the system, that is the old and proposed refrigerents. This had to be done with fire fighting agents which had to be changed to comply with the Montreal protocol on ozone depleting substances.