Undertaken By: LNC Pvt. Ltd. , Recent Publication: 2017
India recently commenced stage II of the HCFC Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP-II) under the Montreal Protocol. As part of the Plan, India seeks to phase out the consumption of HCFC-141b by 2020. HCFCs are primarily used in the foam sector as a blowing agent. While most large-scale foam manufacturers in India have been able to shift to alternate solutions like cyclopentane, around 422 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are expected to shift to a non-ODS blowing agent by 2020. However, alternatives like cyclopentane are not considered a viable option for SMEs due to the small size of the enterprise, shortage of right technical capacity and other reasons. Other alternatives (such as HFCs, HFOs, methylal, methyl formate, water) exist but none of these are a perfect drop-in. There could be trade-offs in terms of ease of foam processing, final foam quality, increase in product costs and GWP of such alternatives.