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Quality check fails 50% of R134a

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Guangzhou city, where four out of eight brands of R134a were found to be below standard

CHINA: A recent quality check on different brands of R134a refrigerant in the city of Guangzhou found that 50% failed to meet accepted standards.

The refrigerants, sold for car air conditioning systems, were randomly tested by the government-run Guangzhou Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision. Nine refrigerant samples from eight companies were tested with four samples from four different companies failing to meet standard requirements.

The failed gases were found to contain an unacceptable amount of non-condensable gases, including oxygen, chlorine, nitrogen, hydrogen and water.

Guangzhou, also known as Canton, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in South Central China.

Last year, the Cooling Post reported on cheap aerosol cans of air conditioning refrigerant being sold in the Chinese auto trade in Shandong, labelled as containing R134a, actually contained the banned ozone-depleting CFC R12. At the time, it was estimated that around 80% of all the cans marked as R134a in the Chinese auto trade could contain R12.

Related stories:

Chinese selling R12 as R134a – May 9, 2014
CHINA: Television reports in China have again highlighted the problems of fake refrigerant flooding the Chinese vehicle air conditioning market. Read more…

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