HVAC/R Market Strategy · September 2026
Reclaiming is starting to change the commercial balance of the refrigerant market. As recovery, separation and regeneration improve, the installed refrigerant bank becomes a more valuable economic asset.
By Michele Cadoni · European Market Entry & Distribution Strategy Partner
Reclaiming is starting to change the commercial balance of the refrigerant market.
The reason is not only environmental.
Every improvement in recovery, separation and regeneration increases the economic value of the refrigerant already circulating inside the installed base.
And much of the access to that refrigerant sits with distributors.
They know the customers.
They circulate the cylinders.
They organise collection.
And increasingly, some of them also control the industrial processes capable of bringing recovered material back to market.
This creates a different dynamic from the traditional refrigerant model.
Manufacturers need adoption of the new products in which they have invested.
Distributors need that transition too, but they also need to preserve the relationship with customers whose installations cannot be replaced or converted immediately.
Advanced reclaiming gives them another way to manage that coexistence.
The technological development behind reclamation therefore deserves attention for more than its contribution to circularity.
It may also influence who controls the pace of the refrigerant transition.
Recovering refrigerant from an installation is only the first step.
The material may contain contaminants. Different refrigerants may have been mixed. The composition of a blend may have changed during operation or servicing.
Reclamation therefore has a more demanding objective: bringing recovered refrigerant back to a quality equivalent to virgin material so that it can return to the market.
Distillation is one of the technologies used to achieve that objective.
But as refrigerant mixtures become more complex, conventional purification is not always sufficient.
Some HFC and HFO combinations exhibit azeotropic or near-azeotropic behaviour, making their components difficult to separate by conventional distillation alone. Research on blends such as R134a/R1234yf and R32/R1234yf has therefore explored selective absorption and extractive distillation using ionic liquids. (sciencedirect.com)
The problem is no longer simply whether the refrigerant can be cleaned.
It is whether its components can be separated at sufficient **purity, yield, speed and cost** to make reclamation industrially attractive.
This is where reclaiming becomes a real process-engineering challenge.
A vacuum-swing adsorption process studied for separating R32 from R410A achieved approximately 97 mol% purity, but only around 31% recovery under the evaluated conditions. (sciencedirect.com)
The lesson is simple:
high purity does not automatically mean high value recovery.
The relevant equation is broader:
purity × recovery yield × throughput × energy × operating cost
Research into extractive distillation shows the same tension. Ionic liquids can provide high selectivity, but solvent capacity, viscosity and cost remain important constraints. (sciencedirect.com)
The future of reclaiming will therefore probably not belong to one technology.
It is more likely to rely on combinations of distillation, selective absorption, membranes, adsorption and other separation processes.
And that evolution is already moving from research towards industrial application.
In September 2026, Hudson Technologies signed a development agreement with Icorium to commercialise an extractive-distillation technology designed to complement conventional fractional distillation.
The objective is faster and more complete treatment of complex refrigerant mixtures, including azeotropes, with higher yield and throughput.
The approach combines ionic-liquid-based extractive distillation with membranes and pressure-swing adsorption. Hudson also sees a potential operational advantage upstream: if mixed refrigerants can be separated more efficiently at industrial level, contractors may eventually have less need to segregate every recovered fluid at the point of collection. (hudsontech.com)
That does not yet prove the commercial performance of the technology.
But it identifies where the next bottleneck may be.
The limitation is shifting from recovering refrigerant to recovering value from increasingly difficult refrigerant streams.
Europe is moving in the same direction.
Climalife is building a three-column distillation unit in France with treatment capacity above 500 tonnes per year. The company says the installation is intended to process increasingly complex multicomponent refrigerants. (climalife.com)
Gazechim, after operating a first industrial distillation unit, has announced further capacity in France and a project in the UK, linking the development to recovery and regeneration at European scale. (gazechim.com)
These investments matter technically.
But their commercial significance may be greater.
A distributor traditionally creates value through:
sourcing → stock → logistics → customer coverage → delivery
Reclamation adds another direction:
installed equipment → recovery → cylinder return → collection → analysis → separation → reclamation → redistribution
The distribution network therefore becomes bidirectional.
The installer is no longer only a customer buying refrigerant.
The installer can also become a source of feedstock.
And a distributor with an extensive installed customer base potentially controls something that a refrigerant manufacturer does not access directly:
the refrigerant already circulating in the market.
The more effective reclamation becomes, the more economically valuable that installed refrigerant bank becomes.
This changes the relationship between manufacturer and distributor.
Both need a viable refrigerant market.
But their interests are not perfectly aligned when the transition is considered product by product.
A manufacturer that invests in a new refrigerant or product platform needs adoption.
It needs qualification, OEM acceptance, distributor commitment, installer confidence and growing volumes.
Ultimately, it needs a return on the investment made in the new product.
The distributor faces another equation.
Its customers already operate equipment.
Some installations can be retrofitted.
Others cannot.
Some customers are ready to replace equipment.
Others are technically or economically unable to make that investment immediately.
For the distributor, those customers remain part of the market.
Reclaimed refrigerant can therefore provide more than environmental circularity.
It provides **commercial continuity**.
It allows the distributor to support equipment that remains operational while new technologies progressively enter the market.
And it helps preserve the customer relationship during that transition.
The more efficient reclamation becomes, the more the distributor can manage coexistence between:
legacy refrigerants, reclaimed refrigerants, retrofit options, new refrigerants and new equipment technologies.
That gives the distributor flexibility.
A manufacturer of a new product has a stronger economic interest in accelerating adoption of that product.
This does not make manufacturers and distributors opponents.
They remain mutually dependent.
But their incentives can diverge.
The manufacturer needs conversion. The distributor needs continuity.
Advanced reclaiming gives the distributor another instrument for managing that continuity.
This is why reclamation should no longer be viewed only as a circular-economy activity.
It can also become a mechanism for preserving market position.
The creation of Euredia in 2026 adds an institutional layer.
Euredia defines itself as the pan-European association of refrigerant distributors, repackers and reclaimers and as the voice of refrigerant distribution in Europe. Its priorities include regulatory implementation, market integrity and the advancement of recovery, recycling and reclamation. (euredia.eu)
This should not be interpreted as evidence that distributors are organising against manufacturers.
But it does show something important.
A part of the value chain that previously operated mainly through individual national companies is building collective European weight at exactly the moment when reclamation and lifecycle management are becoming more strategic.
Three developments are therefore happening simultaneously:
technical capacity is increasing; distribution networks are gaining access to valuable recovered feedstock; and distributors/reclaimers are building institutional representation.
Together, they increase the weight of this part of the value chain.
If reclamation capacity grows, introducing a technically superior new refrigerant is not enough to guarantee rapid market conversion.
The existing alternative may remain economically viable for longer.
This is particularly relevant where reclaimed refrigerant can extend the operating life of equipment that customers are not ready to replace.
Manufacturers may therefore need to become more active in the downstream lifecycle of their products through four main levers:
There are already signs that cooperation, rather than confrontation, may become part of the answer. Climalife and Solstice Advanced Materials, for example, are working together around lifecycle management and advanced reclamation infrastructure for increasingly complex refrigerants. (climalife.com)
Manufacturers cannot ignore the installed base.
Distributors cannot ignore the new product portfolio.
Both need the transition to occur.
But they may not need it to occur at exactly the same speed.
The HVAC/R industry has spent enormous effort developing the refrigerants required for the next generation of equipment.
That race will continue.
But another one is developing behind it.
The first is to create the next refrigerant.
The second is to recover its value when it returns from the market.
Advanced separation technologies make that second race increasingly credible.
And the consequences extend beyond environmental performance.
The refrigerant transition is not only changing the chemistry of the product.
It is also changing where value is created, who controls access to the installed base, and how influence is distributed between manufacturers and distributors.
Circularity may therefore become more than an environmental objective.
It may become part of the competitive architecture of the refrigerant market itself.
About the author
Michele Cadoni
European Market Entry & Distribution Strategy Partner
Independent support for industrial and technical manufacturers structuring market entry, distribution architecture and controlled execution in France, Italy and Europe.