Refrigerant Handling Licence (RHL): Scope, Obligations and Safe Practice
What the licence covers
A Refrigerant Handling Licence authorises an individual to carry out work on refrigeration and air conditioning equipment that involves handling controlled refrigerants. The core activities to understand are: charging and recovering refrigerant, decanting between cylinders, brazing or de-brazing on a circuit, pressure testing with refrigerant or nitrogen, evacuating and dehydrating a system, and leak testing. The licence is personal - it attaches to the technician, not to the business - and it is tied to the specific refrigerant types and work categories the holder is qualified for.
Concepts a candidate must know
Know the difference between recovery, recycling and reclaiming. Recovery is removing refrigerant from a system into a container; recycling is a basic clean-up (oil separation, filtering) on site; reclaiming is reprocessing to a specified purity standard, which normally requires off-site laboratory processing. Know that deliberate venting of controlled refrigerant to atmosphere is prohibited, and that recovered refrigerant must be stored in a suitable, labelled, non-refillable or refillable cylinder that is not overfilled. Understand de minimis and decanting rules, cylinder filling ratios, and the requirement to keep records of refrigerant purchases, recoveries and disposals.
Traps in questions
Common distractors: suggesting that recycling restores refrigerant to new-product purity; treating a business's refrigerant trading authorisation as if it covered an unlicensed employee; assuming a licence permits any refrigerant regardless of endorsement; and confusing leak-testing obligations with a general duty to repair. Watch for wording about who may sign off on recovery records.
Worked example / rule of thumb
Rule of thumb: recover first, then recycle, then reclaim only if purity matters. Example: a technician replaces a compressor on a small split system. Recover the charge into a labelled recovery cylinder, weigh it, record the amount, recycle if reusing in the same system, and never top up a leaking system as a substitute for repair.