Yes, the Vertrel^® solvents are all completely ozone-safe.

It's interesting to hear discussions about the use of solvent cleaning. One comment we recently heard at a trade show was "Solvents? We can't use solvents! Solvents destroyed the ozone layer!"

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Here are the real facts:

In the old days, say, around the middle of the 20th Century, people cleaned with solvents made from alcohols, ketones and hydrocarbons. That was the best technology of the day. They worked reasonably well, except they made people sick, were highly flammable, and incompatible with many materials of construction.

In the mid-1950s, DuPont and other clever companies began to market chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, as solvents and refrigerants. They were widely used in a type of cleaning machine called vapor degreasers such as the one shown in the photo on the right. DuPont marketed these products under the tradename of Freon^® and sold these products as safety solvents.

Around the world, DuPont was congratulated for improving safety in factories. And it's true -- nobody ever had a factory burn down because of Freon^®. In fact, Micro Care Corp. is a spin-off from the world's very first Freon^® distributor.

But over time, however, scientists became concerned that CFCs and other ozone-depleting solvents (not all ozone-depleters are CFCs) were damaging the ozone layer. In 1986 the nations of the world ratified a treaty called the Montreal Protocol which scheduled the international phase-out of CFCs and other ozone-depleting solvents, and promoted the introduction of new, more planet-friendly products.

But commercializing a new product is much more difficult than simply making a few samples in a lab. For example, CFCs featured two fluorine atoms on each molecule. The new Vertrel^® specialty fluids use ten fluorines in each molecule. This means it takes a lot more energy, refining, and intermediate processes to make these atoms behave themselves. It then took even more work to figure out ways to produce them in commercial quantities.

So it was not until the mid-1990s that HFC solvents from DuPont finally started to reach the market in commercial quantities. Today, Vertrel^® specialty fluids should be considered the "New Freon^®" with all the good attributes and qualities that the old product had and none of the problems. It's really quite an accomplishment.

So here's the punchline today: the DuPont Vertrel^® specialty fluids are the ideal replacements for ozone-depleting solvents in precision cleaning applications. They are "drop-in" replacements for old-style solvents such as CFC-113, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, HCFC-141b, nPB, HFE solvents and HCFC-225, as well as high-global-warming solvents such as perfluorocarbons (PFCs).

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