WHAT IS CHLOROFLUOROCARBONS?

In the past decades, governments around the world stopped the usage of many different chemicals and materials that are involved in the production of a wide variety of useful products. The reason for that is because the disposal and the combustion of some of these materials cause exceptional harm to the environment. The Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is one of these harmful chemicals. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are referred to be organic compounds that contain three elements, which are carbon, chlorine, and fluorine atoms. Chlorofluorocarbons was a very cheap, reliable, and useful compound to use. Until, the mid 1970s when scientists identified CFCs as the main cause of ozone depletion in the earth’s atmosphere, this was later confirmed by using satellite technologies and records of the size of the depletion of the ozone layer. Due to this important discovery the use of CFCs in any kind of products was restricted and the production of CFCs was disbanded. When CFCs are released into the atmosphere, they diffuse to high altitudes ranging from 25 to 40 km. There, they are separated with the presence of ultraviolet light as shown by the reaction: CF 2 Cl 2 → CF 2 Cl + Cl. The resulting free chlorine atoms (Cl) decompose ozone molecules (O3) into oxygen (O2) and chlorine monoxide, Cl + O3 → ClO+ O2. Then they regenerated by contact with free oxygen atoms (O) present in the air, ClO + O → Cl + O2. When chlorine is regenerated again, it continues to break down other ozone molecules. This process keeps ongoing for the atmospheric lifetime of the chlorine atom, in which it destroys an average up to 100,000 ozone molecules. All of these reactions demonstrate the cycle’s chlorine atoms, which are present in CFCs, goes through to cause the depletion of the ozone layer.