ABSTRACT
Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) is a shorthand for chlorofluorocarbon. The strong C-F bonds help make it very unreactive, and it has a boiling point around -29.8°C. It is non-flammable and non-toxic, as its inventor Thomas Midgley demonstrated in 1930 at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. Global warming potential measures how much heat a 'greenhouse gas' traps in the atmosphere, compared to the same mass of carbon dioxide. Apart from refrigerators and air-conditioning systems, CFCs were good solvents for substances like perfumes and deodorants in aerosol cans, and good blowing agents to create polymer foams with cellular structures. Before CFCs, ammonia and sulfur dioxide were used as the refrigerant gas. Indeed, right up into the 1970s, CFCs like difluorodichloroethane were ideal for their jobs, but then it was realized that they were major contributors to the breakdown of the ozone layer.
