EPA 608 Practice Questions, With the Reasoning Explained

C. It has been reclaimed

Reclaiming means reprocessing refrigerant back to virgin specification (AHRI 700) and verifying it by laboratory chemical analysis. Recovery just means removing refrigerant from a system into a container. Recycling cleans it in the field with oil separation and filtration, but there is no lab verification, so recycled refrigerant cannot be resold as new. Those three words carry precise legal meanings and the exam tests them directly.

B. A hermetically sealed unit manufactured with 5 pounds or less of refrigerant

A small appliance is a product manufactured, charged and hermetically sealed in a factory with five pounds or less of refrigerant. Household refrigerators, window air conditioners, vending machines and drinking water coolers are the usual examples. The definition hangs on both the factory-sealed part and the five pound charge, not on how hard the unit is to service.

C. 25 mm Hg absolute

Low-pressure appliances such as centrifugal chillers get their own row in the required evacuation table, and it is expressed in absolute pressure: 25 mm Hg absolute. High-pressure equipment is the one measured in inches of vacuum. If you keep one table straight for the whole exam, make it this one, because Type II and Type III questions are built to see whether you can tell high-pressure and low-pressure requirements apart.

B. 10 percent

For appliances containing 50 or more pounds, the repair trigger is 10 percent per year for comfort cooling, 20 percent for commercial refrigeration and 30 percent for industrial process refrigeration. The pattern is worth understanding rather than memorizing cold: the tighter threshold goes to the equipment type that is least likely to be leaking for a good operational reason.

A. 80 percent of its water capacity by weight

Never exceed 80 percent of the cylinder's water capacity by weight, and weigh it rather than guessing. Liquid refrigerant expands as it warms, and a cylinder filled liquid-full has nowhere for that expansion to go. This is the hydrostatic rupture risk that the whole cylinder-safety section exists to prevent, and it shows up on Core every time.

C. It is prohibited under the Section 608 venting prohibition

The venting prohibition was extended to non-ozone-depleting substitutes such as HFCs in November 1995, so zero ozone depletion potential does not make venting legal. There is no small-quantity exemption for deliberate release either. The narrow exceptions are things like de minimis releases during good-faith service practice, not a permitted allowance you can work under.