KOMPAS.com – Air conditioning is a room conditioner that is widely used by humans. Why the use of air conditioning can increase global warming?
This is because the air conditioner uses gas CFC (one of the greenhouse gases) that can damage the earth’s ozone layer. Ozone damage due to the use of air conditioning can increase global warminghere’s the explanation!
The air conditioner releases CFC gas
AC uses a greenhouse gas called Chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs for short. CFCs or what we often refer to as Freon, is a gas produced by a mixture of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon atoms which is very stable.
Air conditioners use CFCs to cool the air and then release it into the atmosphere. Because of their stable form, CFCs released by AC can rise to the Earth’s stratosphere where the ozone layer is located.
Also read: 6 Greenhouse Gases
Reported from American Chemical Society, ozone absorbs most of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation and prevents harmful radiation from reaching the earth’s surface. Simply put, the ozone layer protects life on earth from harmful solar radiation.
CFCs destroy ozone
However, CFC gases that can rise to the stratosphere can damage the ozone layer. In the higher layers of the stratosphere, CFCs encounter high-energy photons from sunlight. Thus, the gas formation is released.
Reported from Chemistry LibreTexts, the chlorine (Cl) in CFC destroys so much ozone (O3) because it acts as a catalyst. The following is a reaction to the destruction of ozone due to chlorine in CFCs:
Cl + O3 → ClO + O2
ClO + O → Cl + O2
O3 + O → 2O2
Also read: Causes of the Depletion of the Ozone Layer
The depletion of ozone increases the earth’s temperature
Reported from National Geographic, one chlorine atom can destroy more than 100,000 ozone molecules. Through this reaction, chlorine destroys the ozone layer that protects the earth.
Makes the damaged ozone cannot absorb solar radiation. As a result, radiation that should be absorbed by ozone, falls to the earth and raises the earth’s surface temperature.
The destruction of thousands of ozone by a single chlorine atom makes the rate of ozone breakdown disproportionate to its natural formation. As a result, the ozone layer can be perforated and increasingly depleted due to increasing levels of CFCs in the atmosphere.
Simply put, the more use of air conditioning, the more CFCs are released into the air. The more CFCs in the air, the more damaged the ozone layer, and the more warming the earth will be.
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