There is no doubt that HCFC-141b is a great cleaner, and for a decade it has provided companies around the world a reasonable choice for vapor cleaning. It's a powerful cleaner, it forms azeotropes with other additives, it works great in vapor degreasers, it has relatively good toxicity ratings, it's nonflammable, and so on. Not bad credentials.

But HCFC-141b is an ozone-depleter; specifically, it's a Class II Ozone-Depleting Substance  under the U.S. Clean Air Act. Because of this fact, the Montreal Protocol requires that for most of the world the manufacture of HCFC-141b must be phased out at the end of 2002. So this would be a bad time to be selecting HCFC-141b as your primary cleaner!

Other regulatory complexities vex HCFC-141b. For example, it can be used in aerosol applications in the U.S., but not in the E.U. However, it is legal to use HCFC-141b in a vapor degreaser in Europe but not in the U.S.! These constraints are guaranteed to worsen over time.

Another potential problem with HCFC-141b is the aggressive nature of the solvent. HCFC-141b attacks many types of plastics, gaskets and coatings. It can be diluted with less aggressive solvents to minimize this problem but those additives add greatly to the cost.

(By the way, everybody asks about the Montreal Protocol, VOCs and global warming. The Montreal Protocol is all about ozone-depleting substances and does not address global warming. For more details about the ozone depletion issue, global warming and VOCs, you can visit the United Nations web site, the Earthwatch web site, the GreenPeace web site, and a new location in the UK called OzoneDepletion.co.uk that has very good info without the polemics found on GreenPeace.)

Contrast these problems with the answers from Vertrel^®. First, within the Vertrel^® family of solvents there are blends that meet and exceed the performance of HCFC-141b in every cleaning application. Vertrel^® has inherently superior materials compatibility than HCFC-141b. Most of the Vertrel^® blends have a higher boiling point than HCFC-141b which reduces solvent losses in vapor degreasers. And, best of all, Vertrel^® works perfectly in the same equipment used with HCFC-141b, so no new investment is needed.

In terms of the environment, Vertrel^® has is completely ozone-safe (it has zero ODP) and is not regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, the cleaner is SNAP-approved and recommended as an excellent replacement for HCFC-141b in cleaning applications.

So if your company is using HCFC-141b for any application, time is running out. As the production is phased down on this old cleaner, prices will rise and availability will fluctuate. Now is a great time to switch to Vertrel^® before the deadline approaches.

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