Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 246. CO2 Experts: Startup and Commissioning with Kevin Mullis

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Episode 246. CO2 Experts: Startup and Commissioning with Kevin Mullis · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Trevor: Starting a new trend here.
• 0:01
  Refrigeration mentor. We're getting the top CO2 experts from around the world. To come and chat about CO2 transcritical refrigeration, because we know it's continuing to grow globally. We need more experts to start sharing our knowledge. And once again having kevin Mullis, a CO2 expert, been doing this for decades and loves sharing his knowledge. And it is really. skills over the years, working with different technicians, construction, install service teams, and learning from them and growing with them.
• 0:02
  And what I'm super excited about, we're going to be diving into some of the things that he's seen over the years for startup and commissioning. And the biggest thing we're going to dive in today is don't get overwhelmed. CO2 is still just refrigeration, just like you've been working on for years.
• 0:03
  But there's just some things that you need to understand. Kevin, welcome to CO2 experts. How are you doing?
• 0:04
  Kevin: I'm good. So I'm good. Thanks for having me back, Trevor. Oh man. Well, I love
• 0:05
  Trevor: chatting with you because you have so much knowledge on CO2 and we can just dive into conversation in every direction, you know what I mean?
• 0:06
  And that's what I love. Not everybody loves learning and listening like that, but for me, it's like, there's just so much to CO2 with the electronics with the way, you know, that you have to evacuate. Is it different? No, but the way a lot of people were doing it was the wrong way and not the wrong way, but the slow way, you know what I mean?
• 0:07
  Yeah, no, definitely. There's so many different things. So I'm excited to chat with you today about this and for those that are listening on the podcast pay attention take some notes if you're you're watching this on youtube and you're seeing the videos Take a look at these images.
• 0:08
  Because it's very important to Understand that co2 is is a bit different. But what you want to know is that it's still refrigeration. That's really what I'm trying to say. It is still refrigeration. Kevin, you got some pictures here. We got some racks. We get some control control electrical crazy pipe work.
• 0:09
  And I've seen some of this, I've been to many installations. You know, you got heat recovery, you get air conditioning, CO2, you get a lot of different things. You got. Glycol defrost. Lots of different stuff. Let's talk a little, a little bit about don't get overwhelmed.
• 0:10
  Kevin: Sure. Yeah. And I think it's really, it's really important when you're first approaching, especially a, a larger site, let's say, or it's your first CO2 startup, you know, you, you're gonna walk in there and you're thinking, okay, this, some of this is new to me.
• 0:11
  Where do I start? You know, and I think it's like you were saying, Trevor, you know, the, the start point is no different to when you're starting up a Freon system or anything that you've done before, you know, there's, there's stuff might be bigger, there might be more pipe work, it might look like the sort of the bottom left photo there, like a, like a rat's nest of pipe work going everywhere with 50 valves, but take a little bit of time.
• 0:12
  You know, you've walked onto that site, take a little bit of time to have a look around, get it clear in your mind, you know, hopefully, if it's a construction site type job, there'll be some system drawings, there'll be maybe some of the pipe work install folks are there, maybe the electricians there, you know, and it's one thing actually, it's, I found very useful when you first start starting stuff up, you, you sort of have the feeling that you're going to be on your own.
• 0:13
  Yeah. You, the experienced guys are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do it. What you soon find when you go on these jobs is there are people in the electrical trade who will be on that site. People on the mechanical trade who will be on that site and they will help you. You will very soon learn who the best people to speak to are and use that, you know, if it's, if it's things you haven't seen before or you look at some pipe work or a panel and you go, What is going on in here, you know, seek out those people or talk to the folks who are on the side and say, okay, who, who piped this, who wired this and use that network.
• 0:14
  Because one thing with being a fridge guy, you are expected to know a bit about everything. But, you know, reality check for all of us. Ain't nobody knows everything about everything and you will soon find there's a better guy or girl at electrics than you, a better guy or girl at pipe work than you, but you can bring all those skills together to do something like this, but you use those people and use them wisely because often you'll find they'll be very happy to, to share that info with you.
• 0:15
  And that's a good start point. And then, yeah, you know, if it's, if it's a rack of that size. You know, it's, it's the same as a small rack. There's just more of the bits, you know, I think we in the last podcast talked a little bit that, you know, when we first did racks of that size, there was like seven empty compressors and four LT compressors.
• 0:16
  And, you know, we've moved on a couple of years with this and we've got more duty on this and less compressors, but you know, everything's got a little bigger. It's, you know, It's just more of the same, you know, compressor still a compressor, isn't it? You know, you talk extensively about compressors on, on your material, don't you?
• 0:17
  And it's, you know, they, the bits change size, but a compressor is still a compressor, you know, and just take a little bit of time, work through it and be methodical when you get started. You know what, it's really easy to get tempted to see you've got to do checks on electrical. You've got to check some mechanical, you've got to get the thing on vacuum.
• 0:18
  You've got to make sure this works, that works, the other works. Don't fall into the trap of starting five different things at once. You know, if it's, if it's you on your own, have a plan about where you're going to start and stick to that. If something minor happens and you get stuck, let's say you get stuck on a cold room cooler.
• 0:19
  If it's taken one, two, three hours and you, you can leave it and come back. Just make a note of it on a list, come back to it later, don't get bogged down, you know, when you've got bigger things going on, but you know, even simple things like you get on that site, you really want to get that system on the vacuum pump, don't you?
• 0:20
  You can't make that go any faster. So, you know, instead of thinking, Oh Lord, where am I going to go? I've got 20 different things to do. Think, what do I need to do to be able to get this system on the vacuum pump? And I can just leave it doing that then whilst I'm doing all my other good stuff.
• 0:21
  Trevor: Yeah but yeah I totally agree with that and I like one of the first things you said And because I had a conversation I had I was working with a technician yesterday talking on the phone And he's been to both my co2 courses and he's going to his first co2 startup today they have already started it and then Next week.
• 0:22
  He's on his second one already. So this is a technician been a couple years in the industry doing supermarket But now it's just starting to dabble with co2 and he was like to get any advice Trevor Like I know the course was great. I learned a ton. I'm so happy that I took it but any advice I'm like first thing is you gotta have a plan for that day What do you don't talk with the manufacturer talk with the lead service guy like that?
• 0:23
  that Job talk or toolbox talk, ask them those questions. You know, what is our plan? What's our objective for today? Is it checking all the sensors? Is it overriding things? Because what I'm hearing and seeing out there, people are putting CO2 in the systems too fast. Because they're being rushed and pressured.
• 0:24
  It's like, we've got to get this up and running. They got to say, no, we got to, we got to do this right the first time, because this is why there's so many issues I'm seeing here in North America and us for sure, is that people are getting gas in the system way too fast, where we need to do those, that planning.
• 0:25
  The sensors, the temperature probes, the wiring. Do you want to comment on that?
• 0:26
  Kevin: Oh, absolutely. And that was a big note, actually, that I had to say on this.
• 0:27
  There is like you say, a massive panic to get gas in things because people think, Oh, I've got to see it running. It's gotta be cold. It's gotta be cold. That is an absolute nightmare scenario because. All you will do is run into problems everywhere. You'll be merrily putting gas into that rack, and you'll be like, It's flooding back.
• 0:28
  It's really flooding back. And then it'll be panic stations because all the compressors will be tripping off on oil, and your pressures will be going up, and you're still putting gas in, and you're like, Ah! You can put gas in a lot later. than what most people think. If you, what you want to spend the time on is as you rightly say, making sure all your sensors are in the right place, making sure you've proved out that the gas cooler fan star, the high pressure valve works to receive a pressure valve works, make sure you transducer faults are an absolute nightmare because everything uses transducers on islands and cabinets and all that good stuff.
• 0:29
  You hardly ever see a job where all of that wiring has happened perfectly, or the transducers have all been opened up. Not because anyone's made a mistake, just because these jobs are volume, aren't they? You know, you do the same thing over and over and over. Then the painter comes along and kicks the wiring or whatever else, you know, spend the time to make sure all that works.
• 0:30
  And when you, when you are in a position to put gas in, put some vapor in, get it to your Whatever pressure your company likes it to be before you charge liquid, you know, it, it can be what, you know, people, people get a little bit worried about. It must be 10 bar, or it must be this, it must be that, you know, pick a round number as long as it's above the triple point.
• 0:31
  Pick a round number. Yeah. That you're happy with. 7,
• 0:32
  Trevor: 8, 9, 10. Doesn't matter.
• 0:33
  Kevin: Exactly. You know, if, if you're happy with a hundred PS, I go with a hundred PSI. But that means that you, before you then, you know. You know, when, when you put vapor in that CO2 system, that vapor isn't going to do anything. It's going to sit there all day long.
• 0:34
  It's not going to get out of control. It's going to be fine. So you've got all the time in the world to go around and double check all those transducers are reading the correct values. You know, nothing's gone crazy. You haven't got a shred of valve that's gone the wrong way and started spraying out everywhere, or you've got a bit of time to go and make sure everything's good for startup.
• 0:35
  And, you know, take that time. Once you start putting that liquid in. You're committed, you know, and even if,
• 0:36
  yeah,
• 0:37
  yeah, yeah, you are, even if you then have a major problem and you pump the rack down, you've still got to do something eventually to maintain that co2 because unless you've got, you know, an 80 bar resilient liquid, eventually, It's going to want to get out again.
• 0:38
  So you you're committing yourself to looking after that CO2 once you put it in. But you're absolutely right. It's an, is it's especially, I think, because if you've come from either an industrial background or a mechanical refrigeration background, you just have so much more controls to hit on the CO2 system and all those things have got to be right for it to function properly.
• 0:39
  And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's all gotta be in place. And the time on the job is much better spent. Getting all that tested before you commit to the gas.
• 0:40
  Trevor: Yeah, and the biggest thing that I see though is there's so much pressure put on these technicians Where I think over the last 20, 30, 40 years doing HFC, and even when I started 20 years ago, my first reno jobs, you know, they were three months to do a reno job, but after the first year, I remember it wasn't three, it was two months.
• 0:41
  Like we got to get these jobs done in two months same amount of work But we just got to put jam more guys on the job or do it faster And then then it was down like to six weeks. So in about two years I was going from three month renos down to like six week renos And that's kind of what's happening already with co2.
• 0:42
  You can't just start up a co2 rack in two days Like one of these racks that we're looking at here, you got seven medium temp, four. There's no way you can do that because there's just too much control, too much checkpoints. It takes maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe three weeks, you know what I mean?
• 0:43
  Kevin: On the site that those photos came from, there are five of those racks and we had, there's five of those racks.
• 0:44
  What have we got? 10 22, 30, 30 evaporators. On that we had we did a month's prep on that before we started anything up.
• 0:45
  Trevor: Yeah a month And this is from guys an experience, right? You know, you've done it before But a lot of guys out there that are doing it right now that I see they don't have that much startup experience
• 0:46
  Kevin: no, no, and it's it's really easy to feel the pressure from your main contractor or your customer or whatever going, it's got to start.
• 0:47
  It's got to start. And it's difficult, especially early in your career to, to find the confidence to say, this is going to go a lot easier. If you let me get on with what I need to do, it will be running on time, but that's what I'm here for. You know, I'll get it cold when it needs to be cold. Just leave me to it.
• 0:48
  And it's, it is a problem because almost the engineers can be a victim of their own success. If you get that rack started on one site within a week, let's say, and it's all good, you know, either by luck or by judgment or whatever else, then there tends to be a perception from the main contractor or the customer that that's the norm.
• 0:49
  Yeah. Everyone,
• 0:50
  Trevor: everyone now, you know, it's the same thing, everyone, but now you've got a High pressure valve. That's not working. You've got a control board that's failed. You don't have a part that's in stock and you know what I mean? You got the route again, you're probably, but you're missing a certain fitting.
• 0:51
  You can't get high pressure, copper, whatever it is. Yeah.
• 0:52
  Kevin: Oh, a hundred percent. We, a few years ago, we did. a lot of Aldi store installs on CO2. I think we did one year, we did 50 stores, you know, you turn it over a store a week, but the, there was, there was supply issues from a few areas on those. And we, we had it down so that we could do prep in advance even of the rack turning up.
• 0:53
  Because the racks were late, but you know, we was constantly saying, this is fine. We'll get it turned around in this time, but the moment we hit, like you say, yeah, HP valve failure or whatever. It's going to be an issue. Don't expect this, you know, sort of truncated timescale to be the norm because it's not, you need to allow room for problems, you know, like some of the things we'll look at in a bit, you know, because they do happen, you know, and you can't, you cut all of that out and then expect it to go perfectly every time.
• 0:54
  But you know, that, that is not how this industry works. Nothing goes perfectly. It doesn't work
• 0:55
  Trevor: like that. And even HFC though, you got to think about that. Even in supermarket. You get that ddr valve defrost differential valve not working, you know And that's one of the main valves right on that rack or you get your whole back valve That's failed like a brand new one.
• 0:56
  That's not working You can, that takes time to cut out, read the pipe, do all that stuff. You know what I mean? So it's no different here with CO2 system. What I really try to in, in talk with technicians about, especially at newer ones, like you got to talk to that project manager, you got to try to have that separation when you're in there.
• 0:57
  Cause sometimes that, that those end users want to be in there and on top of the technician, even on the startup, you know what I mean? This is the way it works sometimes. But hopefully you have someone that. Sales guy that project manager that boss that service manager that can be the in between person You know what?
• 0:58
  I mean because you got to be focusing on the work Not be stressing that someone's on your back because this happens Where that end user or your or your boss is on your back sometimes you got to go to the project manager and say listen You got to help us out here This is what we're dealing with. And you gotta be honest.
• 0:59
  You can't just say, yeah, we can get it done. 'cause I see this a lot. Yeah, we'll get it done, we'll get it done. Because a lot of refrigeration technicians, that's what we say. We'll get it done. Of course we bus our, we bust our our butts to get it done. But other factors happen. You know, I can't get, I can't get something.
• 1:00
  Kevin: No, and that's right. And it's unfortunately, like you say that, that the successes that people have when they do that breed complacency with the customers and the. the builders and what have you to say, well, this contractor did it in a fortnight and it, you know, everything you've got to have room for, for failures to happen because they do, you know, and it's, it's the, especially with the bigger machines like this, you are putting complex things together, big, complex machines, you know, and they, They don't always work right and some of these things you will put together have not been put together before in that particular order, you know, and so you've, you've got to expect a few bumps.
• 1:01
  I mean, I think where you were saying, you know, about you, then you need to have the project manager or whatever involved is really important, you know, because very often on. Building site jobs and renos and things like that, you know, they, the project manager is going to have been there longer, considerably longer than you will have been, and they'll have the contacts on the site to speak to, to say, look, you know, I know this guy, this guy, this guy does a good job, don't be on his case all the time.
• 1:02
  But I think from our perspective, as the engineers going in and doing it, one thing we need to try and do as well is present confidently. Because we, we are not always going to be confident when we walk on that site, you know, especially if it's something unusual or new to us, you know, we've got background knowledge to work with, but we are not going to swear that we've seen it before or done this particular setup before.
• 1:03
  But if there's one thing that causes panic amongst. contractors and customers if the, if the fridge guy looks nervous and unsure when he rocks up on site. And it's, I think it's, it's a, it's a skill to learn to do, but I think you have to try and present confidently, like, you know, this is not my first rodeo when you rock up because some of that pressure that you then feel from those people is if they doubt that you're competent.
• 1:04
  You know, and there's, there's a definite need to, to present well in that, I think, you know, and you, you don't have to lie, you know, absolutely. You don't have to lie and say, man, I've done this 20 times. What, what you've got to say is this is not a problem. Leave it with me. I'll get this. So I'll get this working for you.
• 1:05
  You know, don't, don't come across, you know, sort of unnatural, but present with confidence. And I think the thing you should remember is if you're a tech who's being sent to do a startup, then somebody, your boss, your supervisor, your manager, Knows you're good enough to do that job. So, you know, you, you should carry a certain amount of confidence walking in there.
• 1:06
  Trevor: And I think this is really hard as a new technician, especially if you're new, you're a couple of years in, this is super hard. And even now, if you're five or six years in, or you got that experience on service and you've done years on service, but you never did a startup. It's different.
• 1:07
  Kevin: It really is.
• 1:08
  Trevor: Biggest thing is, is that like you talked about earlier, is that plan and to build some of your confidence in that is like, okay. When you're talking to customers. So we have a plan for today. As long as you reviewed it with someone and maybe not, maybe there's another person there. You should, you should take some notes before if this is a startup and you're going there by yourself.
• 1:09
  And usually you're not you've got to make a list on what you're going to do that day. And if you're, when you're talking to the customers, a good way to make yourself feel confident is you go get, grab the plans, And like you said earlier, you get the engineering drawing. So this is the engineering draw.
• 1:10
  I have not worked on this rack before, but right here, this is the map of this system, and I'm going to follow this map and then grab the electrical. Here's the electrical diagram. I'm going to go through every one of these points to make sure when we start to add gas in there, that everything works seamlessly, and I'm going to be confident that I'm going to check every one of those, I'm not going to be confident that it's going to work the first time, but I'm confident that every one of my checks is going to be the right check at that time.
• 1:11
  And this does take time. But after you get one, two, three, five under your belt, it's going to be like, okay, well now what's, what's the problem that we may hit this, this this time. And I see a lot of technicians not a lot, but some where, when they come into an issue or a problem, it's just a lot of blaming and it slows the job rate down.
• 1:12
  I don't know if you noticed this, Kevin, but it's like, oh, the manufacturer did this, all the end user did this, or this other startup guy, they didn't check this. You know, and I've seen job sites and I've heard like, An hour wasted or two or three hours wasted on a job site where it's like, we got to fix this.
• 1:13
  Let's, let's just go fix it. And we can talk about this later. In, in the review of what worked and what didn't work. What are your thoughts on that?
• 1:14
  Kevin: Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. And what you also get is I'm not fixing that. That's up to the pipe guy, the wire guy, the manufacturer to do.
• 1:15
  That, in an ideal world, where we had infinite time and infinite resource, is absolutely fine. When we live in the real world, and they want the thing running in a week's time, you're going to have to fix it, or you're going to have to have a plan to get it fixed. Because, you know, all that, it's not my problem, it's not down to me to sort that.
• 1:16
  Yeah, unfortunately, one of the things that you inherit willingly or not as the startup slash commissioning engineer is you end up with responsibility for making that thing work. And, you know, yeah, the manufacturer might have made a mistake or the electrician might have wired something wrong. But. The chances are you're the person there.
• 1:17
  You've probably got the skill to do it. Just get it done because you will save yourself a lot of grief because what, like you say, what will happen is two, three hours down the line, you'll be like, I've not moved any further forward because I've been waiting for whoever to come and sort that wiring out.
• 1:18
  Just sort it out yourself. You know, it's that you've got one of the things that comes with doing that job is taking responsibility. You cannot expect everything to be right. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not like buying a washing machine or, you know, a microwave and you plug it in and switch it on and it works.
• 1:19
  I wish it was, but then on the other hand, we'd all be out of jobs, you know, if nothing ever broke down and everything worked first time. So Yeah. Have a plan, get it sorted out yourself if you need to, because it, it wastes too much time waiting, you know, blaming.
• 1:20
  Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. What I see here, and I don't know, maybe, maybe there it's a little bit different, but I see a lot of technicians and startup guys and new ones, they're real, really relying on the manufacturer to do the startup are really relying on the controls.
• 1:21
  Contractor to do the startup where as a, as a startup commissioning, we take that whole job. Like you just said, that's our job at the end of the day. It doesn't matter if the electric stuff is messed up or the control stuff's messed up or whatever. If the fridges aren't working, it'll always come back to us as the refrigeration, even though it's not, we got.
• 1:22
  Five trades, six trades working on this, but for some reason, always come back to the refrigeration technician. If we're taking all that on, we, we got, we got to make sure that we, we get it done, right.
• 1:23
  Kevin: Yeah. And it's, it's like I was saying earlier, you know, they, this is one thing that.
• 1:24
  You know, is, is one in many ways, one of the best bits of the job, but could also be one of the worst bits of the job. You are expected to have knowledge of absolutely everything and people will come to you and say the network's not talking or I've got no power to this or there's a gas leak or a water leak or that's making a funny noise.
• 1:25
  And, you know, you, you might have five or six different specialists who've put all that together. But ultimately. You are the quality control for all of those. And any minor issue with all of those, you're going to sort out. And you say about, you know, relying on manufacturers to start it up. I against some others, I have to say my attitude on that has always been.
• 1:26
  If it's so complicated that only the manufacturer can start it up. What good is it to me? Because the moment I walk off that site and there's a problem, the service guy is going to rock up and he's going to go, how do I make this work? And the first person he's going to phone. is me because I commissioned it.
• 1:27
  And if I say to him, I haven't got a clue how to make that work because whoever came from the manufacturer came down and ran it up for me. That's not a good look because most of those people aren't going to be working at nine, 10 o'clock in the evening when that rack's falling over, you know, it's, it's going to be down to you.
• 1:28
  And that, that has always been. My attitude with these things, if it takes me an extra day to work out how to run it, I spend that day rather than having somebody else come in and do it because ultimately it hurts you down the line because the knowledge then isn't with you.
• 1:29
  Trevor: And the big thing I've seen too, is that if you rely, just like you said, on the manufacturer. A lot at that site, that job goes a lot slower because the manufacturer is not there to do the job. They're not there to be pulling wires, changing wires, setting up all the controls and stuff. Unless they're being paid by that, the end user, the contractor, and they're actually the contractor now, not, not coming in to assist because there's a difference between assist startup.
• 1:30
  Or they're doing the startup. There's two different things. And even at that point, if they are there to do the startup, you should be trying to gain as much knowledge as possible because usually they're flying from a different state, a province or a different place, so they're staying there for that four days, five days or two days, whatever it is, there's opportunity in the evening to take them out for dinner and usually they'll take you out for dinner and you start asking them questions because they, they want to share that knowledge because they don't want to come back.
• 1:31
  You know what I mean? They got, they're booked for 52 weeks straight at different job sites. They want to share that knowledge with most of them. There's some that maybe not, but all the ones that I know, they want to share that knowledge with the technician so that the job goes smoothly because that makes their life easy.
• 1:32
  Yeah. They don't have to take those extra phone calls.
• 1:33
  Kevin: No, totally. And the way, the way I like to go about that, if, if we've got a job where the manufacturer is involved, which happens occasionally for whatever reason. I want some time on that site first with one of my colleagues, maybe, who's similarly experienced and I want a good look at that and I want to get through it as far as I can.
• 1:34
  And if I'm happy that I can start it up before the manufacturer gets there, great. I'll start it up. If I think I need to ask them about this, this and this. Then yeah, I might hang on, but I don't want when that manufacturer walks in, like you say, that I haven't switched a breaker on or checked a valve or whatever else I want to be.
• 1:35
  So I can go, yeah, what about this? Cause I've checked this and I found this, but I think that's, that's a really important thing. When you, as I was saying earlier, you know, you develop a little bit of a network of people who know about stuff. Yeah. So you might have a guy or a girl who's really good at Danfoss.
• 1:36
  You know, or works for a Dan Foss contractor, let's say, you know, and you will come back to them time and time again and say, Oh, I've got this problem. You know, I've checked this, this, this, this, and this, and they'll give you that information, but when you, that network's really useful to you, but as a, as a startup guy or girl, you can't misuse that because some people.
• 1:37
  take the shortcut when they find an expert in a field and they'll walk straight onto a site, see a problem on, let's say an E2 panel. And the first thing they'll do is ring up the expert on the E2 panel and go, I've walked on, it says this, you know, and that would really annoy me. I'd be like, okay, that's absolutely fine.
• 1:38
  I'll help you. What have you checked so far? And if the answer is nothing, Then I'm not going to be happy. And you imagine that's a manufacturer. They're getting 50 calls like that a day, aren't they? With people going
• 1:39
  Trevor: right now. Yeah, exactly. You know, you know,
• 1:40
  Kevin: it's exactly, you know, they, they, they're getting calls from people who haven't checked things and.
• 1:41
  I've always tried to keep it that I will have done the absolute maximum I can to have found an issue or got the maximum way through a startup or whatever else before you make that call. Because it may, you know, it hurts me professionally, to be honest, if the first thing they ask me is, have you checked this?
• 1:42
  And I go, you know, because I've not done it, you know, so I think that's really important. Use that resource, but use it appropriately.
• 1:43
  Trevor: And honestly, there's only so many checks. These are complex. There's a lot know, is it a 500 checks? Is it a thousand checks? Is it 2000 checks? You know what I mean? There's only so many there.
• 1:44
  You know, it's not in inny. You
• 1:45
  Kevin: there? Yeah. There's gonna be tricks and ways. You know, you'll have checked what, let's say you can't get a controller online. You have checked the cable's, right? You'll check the addresses in there. You'll have checked that it's set up on the whatever monitoring panel it is.
• 1:46
  You cannot get that online. You are gonna phone up. Corel, Danfoss, RDM, whoever. And the first time they're going to go, Kev, have you checked this? Or yeah, whatever else. And you're going to go, oh man. But use that knowledge. And next time you have that problem, make sure you've checked that thing. Because then when you phone up that person and say, look, I've been through all the normal stuff.
• 1:47
  I've checked that thing you told me last time. You know, make sure that you learn from those, those interactions.
• 1:48
  Trevor: The big thing is what you said earlier, because a lot of times if a manufacturer is coming out for site, it's usually a couple of days. Could you imagine if you've checked almost everything, tested everything and how many days of training you can get from them
• 1:49
  so if you can get your site as much as possible to where it should be, then you've got two or three days of training where you can be getting paid and they're just training while we got it up and running, let's do this. Let's do that. Let's see this, ask them questions. Cause they might've been on a hundred, 200 different startups where you're, you got 200 about.
• 1:50
  And so they can talk to you about all these different, you know, Scenarios that they came across. So you're learning for your next startup.
• 1:51
  Kevin: Yeah. Well, and of course the, the sort of other angle is that if they have only got two days and you've done little or nothing by the time they get there, it's not unheard of for that manufacturer to go, you are not ready for me.
• 1:52
  I'm off until you are ready. And of course that is going to be disastrous for whatever program you're working to. So. You know, it goes back to what we said right at the start. Have a plan, get everything you know needs to be done, done. You know, even silly things, you know, you're, you've, you know, you've got to get the racks on vacuum.
• 1:53
  Don't forget, before you put it on vacuum, you've got to put oil in it. And you've got to potentially put dryers in it because there's nothing worse than you've had it on vac for a week. You've got it down to a thousand microns, 700 microns, and then you go and put the oil in. You know, nobody wants that, you know, make sure everything you can possibly do, or you don't want the manufacturer turning up and saying, so you put the filters in then.
• 1:54
  Yeah. And you're like, the filters don't come in, you know, and they'll be like, no, they're in the box over there. You know, do, do all those things, do your steps, get it to wherever you can get it to. And they'll be happy when they walk on and they see that, you know, they can go, yeah, brilliant. All you need to do this, this, and this, and they're all right.
• 1:55
  Trevor: And you can get those procedures from that. You can read, cause these, most of the field startup guys, if you shoot them an email, Hey, In three weeks you're gonna you're supposed to be on site with us What should I have done and what's that order and now I'm good good ones will they say okay You need to do this this this and this is this and that could be like checking the pressure transducers overriding them Get the the evacuation done for some some people do actually i've seen do the evacuation Then put the oil in or didn't know, then put the vapor in, then add the oil, pull another, a vacuum, you know what I mean?
• 1:56
  So there are different ways of doing it, but it doesn't matter on that process out, getting the filters in as well. You know what I mean? But you gotta get all this done and just ask them, what's your step? Where do you want me to be and list the steps out? So when you get here in three weeks that we're hopefully close to that or there.
• 1:57
  Kevin: Yeah. And I think that's, that's really important. And like you say, you know, if you've got that, that way of contacting whoever's going to come and help you, you can be two, three days off and you go, Hey, you know, you're coming to see me. I've, I've just run into this problem. Is it something I can easily sort before you get here?
• 1:58
  Or do you want me to wait till you're in front of it? And, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing worse. Like you say, you've got two days with that person. They spent half a day trying to one pick a problem while you've been sort of sat around going to wait till the manufacturer gets here, you know, you, you need to maximize because the timescales are so short and you need to maximize the use of all that time.
• 1:59
  Trevor: And we're not saying that every time you're going to be able to reach out to that field startup guy or that manufacturer, you may not get a hold of because they're, they're a lot of their crate, this refrigeration, you're crazy busy right now that you're listening to this, you're driving to a site right now, you know what I mean?
• 2:00
  So they're crazy busy as well, but at least you put the effort in to be ahead of that be ahead of the curve so you can get, you'd be most effective. While they're there and this gives the best outcome for the service technicians down the road best outcome for the end End users down the road or the customers and as well as the best customers for a manufacturer because we want to win win win We want to make it easy for us as technicians So we don't have those two o'clock in the morning service calls We want to make it easy for the customers because they have systems running And they're confident with CO2 because it is still a new technology for a lot of people, even though it's been out for 20, like 20 years.
• 2:01
  And then we want the manufacturer to be like, man, this startup went great. I want to, I'm going to tell the end user to get this contractor again, or vice versa. You know what I mean? So now the end user wants to manufacture and the end user wants that specific contract because they make it easy. And when you make it easy for everyone, man, people that's value.
• 2:02
  Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you've. What will happen? You get that thing running. Well, it gives people confidence that if there's a problem down the line, they come back to how you had it to start with. Even if it's been tampered with 20 times since then, you know, the, if the customer can say, or the manufacturer can say, we had that running spot on when we finished it.
• 2:03
  It gives a reference point that people come back to if it's always been Yeah. There or thereabouts. Then it puts questions and, and that makes people tamper with it more, you know, if it, if it runs nicely. People will leave it alone. It's when it's not running well, when you leave it, that people start playing and they may make it better, but they may make it worse.
• 2:04
  And you know, you, the whole point of you being the startup guy is you want it to be the best it can be when you leave, because that should be the reference point going forward.
• 2:05
  Trevor: So what could be one, one or two tips of a startup guy? They got it up running great. They got to go to another job site. Now they're going to be turning it over to their service team.
• 2:06
  What are some tips, like some documents, some programs, some downloads, some backups. What are some tips for that service startup guide to have? So if they got a call in a month's time and everything is not working properly, things are crashing. What are some of the things that they could do to protect themselves protect the system?
• 2:07
  Before after they left,
• 2:08
  Kevin: so yeah, I think you want to make sure whatever your company's commissioning startup paperwork is, is completed as fully as possible. And you're talking things like set points, you know, suction discharge, flash tanks, set points, pressure switch limits, HP limits, LP limits, Run amps for compressors and all that good stuff.
• 2:09
  And I think you want that documented somewhere. Keep a copy of it as well, because you don't know where that's going. You know, it's probably going to go into the operation manual. Will the operation manual ever be seen on site? Who knows that depends on the customer, you know, it may go into a digital archive somewhere.
• 2:10
  What I would also say, if you've got something like a RDM front end panel, where you can download the configuration of the panel, download that. If you've got something like Danfoss, where you can upload the config from the fixtures into the panel, make sure you do that. Get whatever backups you can. If you've got a Corel front end system, you can download the entire setup of the panel.
• 2:11
  Onto a stick, you know, do that, get yourself, if not only for your own protection, but also if there is a disaster, there's a start point to get it back, but, but also make sure if you've got a piece of plant like that on the screen, you know, with a law of adjustable pressure switches on it, you, you're going to set that up market when you've set it up, even if you check it, it's exactly what the manufacturer said, you know, the high pressure switches, 108 bar, like it should be put a label on it.
• 2:12
  Say in 108 bar, I used to on the old, the old school pressure switches, you know, with the, like the Dan Foster, what have you, with the screws on the top, I used to mark them with a little bit of correction fluid on the screw so that if somebody turns the screw, it cracks correction fluid, you know, somebody's fiddled with it because how do you tell?
• 2:13
  Otherwise, you know, on the, on the old analog scale, you are, you're not going to tell if somebody's moved it. If you've marked it, then, you know, you know, be, you know, Do things like that to make sure the thing, if things have been tampered with, you know, or somebody else knows if you say, well, I set that to 108 bar and I marked it and they go, Oh, there's nowhere near the mark now, then, you know, somebody is fiddled, don't you?
• 2:14
  And I think all things like that, because as you say, you are the first person they'll come back to a hundred percent if something's not right.
• 2:15
  Trevor: Yeah, I like that. You got to get the backups of all the controllers on there. So you have it. And I think what you said, if there is a catastrophe, all of a sudden it crashes and it loses a program or someone does press buttons that they don't know.
• 2:16
  And they raise the program. I've heard of this before, you know, it's not easy to do, but if you look in the thing and it's like, okay, you raise that or whatever, and you just think you're raising a point, but you raise the whole thing. Now you can get that, that up and, and at least in a, maybe a couple hours, you know what I mean?
• 2:17
  You call the guy, wake him outta bed, get the program. But for you to have all that stuff, because that is your main s starting point when things happen, things may have changed over the years, but that would be a good starting point. Yeah,
• 2:18
  Kevin: and it's the, one of the worst is like alarm panel failure. So, you know, be it an E two or a a SM eight 50 or a an RDM data manager.
• 2:19
  You know the, all your fixtures can be running great, happy days. They're still trading, but that new front end panel turns up and if you haven't saved the configuration, all those fixtures are gonna log on, but they're gonna log on on their addresses. Or if it's a damn fast, you can put a database in. But you need some way of knowing address number you've put in each fixture, because otherwise, you know, address one to 30 on the front end is gonna mean absolutely nothing.
• 2:20
  When that alarms to the store and it says, oh two one high temperature. That's not necessarily what you've stuck as the name of the fixture, because you've probably put a name onto it, you know, or when somebody comes to reprogram your Danfoss panel or your E2 and do a database, they need to know what, you know, what system 25 was addressed as, because it might not be 25, it might be 250, it might be 205, you know, and it, there needs to be, because it's so difficult, otherwise, if you've got a supermarket with 150 fridges in it, it gets painful trying to find out what everything is,
• 2:21
  Trevor: Yeah, and I agree with that and this is why it's important to to go through all this stuff and you know You could get up to roll up to a store and it's a danfoss You never worked on a danfoss if the manufacturer's there the control this is the time to ask those questions You might not have time during that day because you got work.
• 2:22
  You might be adding oil You might be checking sensors or whatever that job is. You might be working on Stuck EEVs, whatever it is. But when you get the time, you ask, okay, how do I use service tool? I've never hooked up my computer before. I don't even have a computer. I'm going to go out and buy one tonight at a store.
• 2:23
  You know what I mean? And when I'm bringing it in, let's upload it. So I can, can you show me, give me 20 minutes and show me how to down. Download the backup, the first step, you know what I mean? And, and then go, go from there and that's how you learn. And that's how you grow.
• 2:24
  Kevin: Oh, Sean, my Danfoss guy will tell you, I phone him all the time for things like that because I'm quite infrequent with Danfoss and I'll, I won't speak to him for weeks and weeks and months and I'll be on the phone.
• 2:25
  I get shot. What's changed about this? But that's, that's the important thing about, You know, getting that information out of the specialists, building, building a network of people. But he, yeah, you want those people to know as well, that if they've got a problem that you're more expert in, that you'll pick up the phone to them.
• 2:26
  You know, it's not fair that it's all one way traffic, is it? Because a lot of these people you meet will work for different contractors and do different jobs. And as I say, as a, as a startup guy, who's a generalist in everything, you know, there's going to be times where they're going to want some advice.
• 2:27
  And, you know, you want to be the person who answers the phone to them and says, yeah, I've come across that. Try this. You know, make, make it fair and, you know, that builds your relationship with those people, doesn't it? So when you're really in trouble, they'll help you.
• 2:28
  Trevor: Oh, yeah, it's definitely two ways. So this is what we do.
• 2:29
  We want to help each other out just because they're a manufacturer. They know different things than you, you do, you know, and vice versa. And I really like that because you're going to go. Sometimes you're going to have manufacturers that haven't seen what you see. Because you do the service all the time, or you do lots of these different startups with different controllers or different rack manufacturers.
• 2:30
  And that rack manufacturer does it a little different than this rack manufacturer or vice versa. And you need some help and they need some help. Okay. Well, I'm on the site trying to figure this out. Have you seen this? So I like that two ways.
• 2:31
  Kevin: Yeah. The, the, the interesting thing is sometimes minor component failures never get reported back to the manufacturer.
• 2:32
  You know, you can have had a hundred of this relay fail or this fail fail. And because the cost is so minimal, people don't report it back to the manufacturer because it's, it's harder work than just changing it. And you'll speak to the manufacturer and they'll say, we've never had one of those fail and you'll be like, literally everyone we've got's failed, you know?
• 2:33
  So sometimes that's the only way that information gets back.
• 2:34
  Trevor: Let's dive into some startup and commissioning actual, some sites that you've been on and talk about a few things. So evac, let's start with evacuation. Cause evacuation is one of the most important things on a system and evacuation is going to happen.
• 2:35
  Sometimes while you're checking, doing all your checks, right, this is a great time to do all your wires, your programming checks, your overrides. Let's talk a little bit about when you're doing an evacuation on a transcritical wrap, what's your processes, and how much different is it than an HFC system?
• 2:36
  Kevin: Yeah, so, in, I mean, in essence, it isn't. super different than doing it on a HFC system. You, there's, it's one of the things we were talking about before we started, weren't we? There's wildly different expectations for vacuum levels, depending on where you are. But yeah, you, you want to get that as much evacuation time as it can have.
• 2:37
  The bigger the system is, especially, you know, the longer you can leave it. So for me, the way we normally approach it is anything that can only be done with pressure in it, will do with pressure in it, or anything that will be a lot easier with pressure. After that Then it gets emptied out and it goes on vacuum and we'll complete everything else whilst you're on vacuum.
• 2:38
  You know, even if let's say it's down to transducer testing, if you've got all your transducers on a rack on a manifold, don't hold off from starting to evacuate the system because of that, because you can just valve that manifold off, put a bit of nitrogen in it, raise the pressure in the manifold and do all your transducers checking off the back of that.
• 2:39
  If you're holding up doing the evacuation, you might think, great, it'll only take me five minutes to check those transducers. What happens if there's a fault? You then get bogged down trying to work out what the fault is. It's then become two hours that you haven't got the thing on vac for, and you multiply that by how many times there are, it takes ages.
• 2:40
  So we'll, like you said earlier, there are different ways of doing it. We tend to get. Everything that needs to be invasively done in the system done before it goes on vacuum. So all the oil will go in, the dryers or the suction filters or whatever else will either be checked or installed as necessary.
• 2:41
  One thing is really important to do, check every valve is open. That tends to be a difference between CO2 racks and other systems. There are a lot more valves
• 2:42
  and
• 2:43
  you might, depending on where you've got access to evacuate it from. You might need to force the high pressure valve partially open, you might need to jack a solenoid on the oil reservoir, for example, open in order for you to get the vacuum to reach it, because especially on sort of intermediate pressure oil systems.
• 2:44
  If all the compressor feeds are closed, the oil feed to the, from the separators is closed and there's a non return valve in the line to the flash tank, how are you going to get vacuum into that,
• 2:45
  into
• 2:46
  that reservoir? You know, it, you need to find a way for the vacuum to get into it. So have a think where you're putting your lines on your HFC with quite easy, you know, one on the high side, one on the low side at minimum, and you'd get there.
• 2:47
  check things, you know, even liquid injection, hot gas valves, you know, the gas cooler, as I say, you might need to jack the high pressure valve open, even if you only put a jumper line from the gas cooler return to the flash tank, so that there is a route for that vacuum to find its way through, make sure that everything is working.
• 2:48
  is open and check and I don't know why manufacturers do this check that the valve caps are tight on things because I swear honestly manufacturers are terrible for doing a beautiful job of lagging over valves with caps that are loose and it drives me insane because I'm like There's a seal in that cap because if you don't tighten, if you don't tighten it up, it won't seal and CO2 is a nightmare for finding its way out of valve stems.
• 2:49
  You crack any ball valve on a CO2 system that's had a tight cap, you'll hear a little hiss. They all weep through the stems. So even if it feels painful to go over the 20 or 30 little ball valves that are already lagged on that pack, go over them because you will find they're all loose. And you may find, you know, you may only find one ball valve that shut on one site, but it's worth it to save you the agro later of going, why is this not working?
• 2:50
  So yeah. Get, make sure everything's open. Do the same in the field on your cases, cold stores, whatever else, check everything's open. Get that vacuum on depending on the size of your system. You may need to change that oil after a day. You may need to change that oil after a week, but the chances are, especially if it's a larger system, you're going to need to change your oil.
• 2:51
  It's going to get saturated. And yeah, use, use experience, you know, and if you don't know how long it's going to take to get to a decent vacuum, speak to somebody. How long is this going to do? I realistically need to have this on for I personally wouldn't leave the vacuum gauge on all the time because.
• 2:52
  As the vacuum gauge manufacturers tell you, most of the lines are not rated for high vacuum operation. So they will weep, just put it on when you want to check it and yeah, I mean, go to whatever your vacuum level is, whatever your vacuum hold test is, as, as we found out in our conversation earlier on the UK is somewhat less tight on the vacuum levels that we need as a lot of places will still say 2000 microns or less.
• 2:53
  That's
• 2:54
  Trevor: good to know. Cause here, like, I like this, this pump here it's a 20, 17 horsepower, 25, I think CFM. They pulled this site down to 17 microns. Like that's 0. 017 Tor, you know what I mean? Like they ran it for a week or a week and a half, but they had the time to do that. You know what I mean? And the big thing is, is that you just want to make sure that you get any more, as much moisture as possible out of those systems.
• 2:55
  Kevin: Yeah. It's yeah. And. You are, as we were saying earlier, you are going to struggle if somebody has made a big mistake and there's liquid water in that system. People think that pulling a deep vacuum gets rid of a lot of liquid water. It doesn't. It'll help with, you know, a little bit of moisture in the system.
• 2:56
  It'll boil it off. If you've got liquid water sat in a vessel, the chances of pulling it out with a vacuum are slim to none. You know, you, you need to make sure that if you've got a drain point on a vessel, a low point on it, and you think there's any chance there's water in it, while you've still got nitrogen in it, open that valve and make sure that what comes out is just nitrogen, because you'll win a lot faster than trying to pull it out with a vacuum.
• 2:57
  Trevor: Yeah, if you've got water in a system like that, you've got to heat it up somehow, or drain it like you do, but if you can't drain it, you've got to heat it up. You've got to get some heat to that system. And just warm it up as much as possible. It's going to take a lot longer to evacuate, but you get it done.
• 2:58
  Big hoses, no straighters, you know, all the same things that you do in HFC. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And big, big pumps, headers, every point as possible. Sole noise open you know, in HFC you had some manual stems. I don't know. I don't think in CO2 you have many manual stems, but you either put power to the, the sole noise.
• 2:59
  If there are sole noisy UV or add. Have tons of magnets if they're not, or put jumper points, just like you say, grab a big hose and go from one point to the other to make sure that everything's down to a deep back.
• 3:00
  Kevin: Yeah. Those, those racks we had on before we'd have six or seven hoses on them, probably all manifolded together to the pump to make sure we got all the areas on them.
• 3:01
  Trevor: And this is after, like Kevin said, you got to do that pressure test and you're going to have different pressure tests for different points, because we know in CO2, there could be five different pressure sections in a CO2 system. So you got to make sure you do the proper procedures that are at your local jurisdiction, because there are different codes around the world, depending on where you're listening from on what they do for here in Canada.
• 3:02
  It's really, it's strict. And I know in the UK, it's strict, your PED and stuff like that. So yeah. We got to be 10 percent above what the pressure relief is. So that means you got to block off the pressure relief valves, you know, you got to block them so they don't pop off. And then you got to test them above that.
• 3:03
  So make sure you follow your local codes. So, so in this photo here, where we see this is contaminated stepper valve, this is a corral one. This is on startup.
• 3:04
  Kevin: Yeah. I'm No matter what good job your installation contractor has done of purging with nitrogen and, you know, going all the steps to a clean system, there will always be the odd joint that gets done.
• 3:05
  Without nitrogen. There's always a last joint or there's bits that were assembled offsite. You know, your cabinets have been assembled off site, for example. And there's always the potential that a little bit of stuff like that will come down. Steel stuff is the worst for it. We've had a lot of steel stuff where there's horrendous scale comes through the system.
• 3:06
  But yeah, and what you tend to find with the corral steppers, which are really good valves, actually, especially on cabinets, that sort of operations is the. It looks really bad on the filter. That's not what kills it. The little bit of really fine dirt that gets into the screw mechanism. Then the head section kills it and you'll find it just won't wind.
• 3:07
  It'll get stuck in whatever position it's in. And it's really important to remember. And I'm sure a lot of your guys know, some of them probably don't that just because the controller says 0 percent or a hundred percent or 50%, that isn't necessarily where the valve is. That's the controller thinks it's give the valve enough pulses to get it to that position.
• 3:08
  You know, just because it says 0%, if it's mechanically stuck, it's going to send it those pulses and it's not going to move. So it's going to go, I've done my job, it's the valves closed, but it can still be wide open. So if, if it's misbehaving like that, have a look in it. You may well find, you know, you may take the filter off and go, okay, it doesn't look too bad inside.
• 3:09
  You can get for those valves, a manual winding magnet. As I'm sure you know, with loads, different sizes on it, you can manually wind the valve. You can also, there's nothing to stop you running the controller with the head of the valve off and you can watch the controller, drive the valve up and down. And you know, that will show you whether the controller can shift it.
• 3:10
  Sometimes the magnet, if you use the manual magnet, it's better driving the valve than the stator is. So, you know, don't always assume just cause you can twiddle it with a magnet that it's going. There's nothing at all wrong with taking that filter off, starting the controller up, even if you can't run it because there's no pressure on your transducer.
• 3:11
  Because you've blown the case down, it will still do a position find when you start it up. It will still drive the valve all the way shut to make sure it knows where to start from. If it doesn't do that, when you're watching it, you know there's a problem with the valve guts.
• 3:12
  Trevor: That's a good point there.
• 3:13
  You can use the magnet to drive it home. So, you know, that's 0 percent and you just spin and spin it and there's no more spinning in it. You can even spin it a few more times. You could use the stator itself, but depending on the manufacturer and even on the controller, if you take the. This is what Carell told me, especially under high pressure valve.
• 3:14
  If you take off the stator and , the controller thinks it 20%, but it's really at 80%. When it goes to drive home from the controller, it's only gonna push it 20% or 30%, then it's gonna still be open.
• 3:15
  So you gotta just make sure that you gotta drive that valve. Home, like, so you got to spin it with a stator, spin it with a magnet. And this goes with other manufacturers that use the same type of technology. Don't like you said, Kevin, don't always believe in the control, go and verify.
• 3:16
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 3:17
  Any stepper type valve. Yeah. If you disturb the electrical connection while it's driving, it may flag a motor error, it may realize you've done it. But that doesn't necessarily mean it'll sort it out when you plug it back in. You need to force that controller to go through its recalibration. Most of the controllers, when they start up, do a position find because it's theoretically possible the first time that powers up, the valve could be anywhere.
• 3:18
  So as I'm sure a lot of your engineers know, when you set up the stepper valve in the controller. You've got your number of nominal steps and you've got your number of closing steps and your number of closing steps is usually about 10 percent higher. And that's to ensure wherever that valve is,
• 3:19
  Trevor: when it
• 3:20
  Kevin: shuts, it hits the seat and it's, it knows that it's fully closed.
• 3:21
  So it's got a good start point. If you, if you disturb that electric part of it, you will end up out of position and that error will get worse. Because when it tries to start again, it's going to move it further out of position. You need to get it back to a point where it knows where the valve is.
• 3:22
  Trevor: Yeah.
• 3:23
  And you got to understand the electronic valves. We could do a whole session on this is where over time, if they don't ever drive home, they will start to lose steps. Cause there's a lot of them don't have feedback signals. So it'll start to lose a bit of steps over time. You're like, well, it's not never closing.
• 3:24
  We're always bleeding by and why the compressor keeps starting up and pumping down. It could be that. So
• 3:25
  Kevin: yeah. And hold current, hold current's worth mentioning. A lot of stepper valves need hold current. Otherwise the same thing happens. They start weeping. Once they hit the step, the drive current goes off and it just relaxes a little bit and it'll start passing.
• 3:26
  Trevor: So here's another one. I like this one. We, I haven't seen much here in Canada. There is some, but a glycol defrost. I know my, some of my friends in the UK, they, they do glycol defrost all the time under CO2. So they like it way better than hot gas because of the thermal shock. And this is a good shot of one glycol defrost on a system.
• 3:27
  You want to talk a little bit about it?
• 3:28
  Kevin: Yeah, so yeah, we were using this on some larger coils because obviously very large coils, especially in LT applications, take a lot of electricity to defrost them. And if you've got a big refrigeration system. Great way to recover some of that heat is for defrost what we had on this particular example.
• 3:29
  Trevor's circled the two probes there. What we found with these larger coils was that we were getting uneven distribution of the CO2 through the coil and we were generating a lot more frost on the bottom of the coil than the top. And you would think I'm Michael defrost is brilliant. It's really powerful at clearing the coil.
• 3:30
  But what the manufacturer has said to me was that it doesn't quite work like that. What happens is the glycol comes into the coil. And if there's a part of the coil, it's warmer. The glycol will fly through that, it stays thin. If it hits the part of the coil that's frozen Gets colder and it gets thicker.
• 3:31
  So the speed of the glycol through that section is a lot slower. So you end up with the majority of your flow through the bit that doesn't need it. And if you're tracking your defrost success by the outlet temperature, like you might do on a hot gas defrost, it will look like it's brilliant. It looked like the outlet temperature come way up because it was defrosted, but it hasn't.
• 3:32
  All you've done is cleared the bit that wasn't frozen. So with the two probes here, we were trying to track Whether we were getting even flow through the coil, because what we also found was that you could overcome a certain amount of that resistance. If you increase the overall flow into the coil. Otherwise it would just separate straight off and you'd go all through the easy way and not enough through the hard way.
• 3:33
  Trevor: And, and this is not difficult. I bet you, when you started this up, you probably didn't have the two probes there. But what you, what you did is that you went to a bore point on whatever the controller was, put a bore point in as a temperature point. And then you had a trend graph. So anytime you go to in, this is your in input of your temperature probe.
• 3:34
  This is your out. And then you go to the. Trend graph, then you look at those temperatures, either lying graphs or, or I think this is not difficult stuff, but if you never did it before, you got to get into that controller manual and understand how to put a board point in and how to log that because the only, not only you got to put the board point in most, in most manufacturers, you got to log it.
• 3:35
  So set it up as a logging point.
• 3:36
  Kevin: So, yeah, I mean, you can be resourceful. So what we had on this was because the building was so big, the expansion valve driver was next to the evaporator, but we were monitoring it using an evaporator outlet probe, but they weren't important for control. So we said, well, we'll temporarily repurpose those both onto the glycol defrost circuit.
• 3:37
  Because, you know, they, they would just give us monitoring so we could get without having to run any, because I mean, you were talking for these coils, probably 150 meters to the plant room. So it was way too far to easily run a cable. So we're like, yeah, let's move those probes. We'll change the names on the system.
• 3:38
  So we know what they are, you know, glycol top, glycol bottom. And exactly like you say, we can then track whether we're getting even flow through the coil.
• 3:39
  Trevor: Then, and this is just thinking outside the box to figure out a solution. Cause you got to track stuff. That's how you learn reading more trend graphs.
• 3:40
  Like I've learned so much, but just looking at so many trend graphs, so many, like. Transcritical rack screens on different manufacturers. Just looking at all the pressure. What's that oil pressure. What's that suction. What is the, you know, flash tank pressure. And then over time, I'm just like, okay, this is what it should look like, even if they have different, if they're different set points, but you know, well, I know I'm running at, you know, zero degrees or 20 degrees and then you start to see it over and over again.
• 3:41
  It's like, you start to. You can learn a lot
• 3:42
  Kevin: about behavior that goes away, you know, transient behavior. And that's the only way you'll find it out because somebody will tell you it's doing it and you'll look at it and it won't be doing it. It's only in that log that you'll find it.
• 3:43
  Trevor: Yeah, exactly. So here's another one off a glycol system.
• 3:44
  So there's a cap in the line. I've never had that happen in an HFC system before.
• 3:45
  Kevin: No. So that was that was an extension to a big glycol ring main and we'd, they a new cooler would be fitted to it. And it had been done with press fit tubes. You know, I mean, it was I forget which manufacturer is one of the many press fit manufacturers and.
• 3:46
  The cooler wasn't working and. Well, obviously with glycol, you've got a flow meter you can put onto the balancing valves to see what flow is going through. Literally zero flow, you know, and you're like all the valves are open. What's going on here? And so we ended up at the point where we were, Having to literally cut the pipe and see if any glycol was coming out.
• 3:47
  There, there comes a point where you have to manually get involved and do it. And so I, I literally, with the, the pipe guy picked a point halfway down the flow line and said, let's cut it there. See what we've got. Cause we can obviously backfeed the return through the coil. We can open the flow and nothing came out of the flow.
• 3:48
  And what we found was that the, there was a section with a couple of 90 degree bends in it and the, the straight piece in between them was too short. So they'd put a coupling in, but the little piece of pipe that used to extend there. Had the cap it's still in it, but it had been pushed slightly up the pipe and then that had been crimped into the push fit 50 to the press fit fitting.
• 3:49
  So it wasn't going anywhere. It was crimped in there, but it obviously completely stopped the system working.
• 3:50
  Trevor: And that was a good, that it stopped the system. Cause now you can figure it out. There's sometimes when I'll bleed by, because I've done like on job sites, I've been working months straight and we're just piping.
• 3:51
  Thousands of feet, thousands and thousands of meter of pipe. And there's sometimes you throw a pipe in, it's three o'clock in the morning, you burn it up. And then all of a sudden you're trying to pressure test or something and it's not, not working and actually getting a drill. And just like you drill in holes before we get anything in there.
• 3:52
  And all of a sudden you get nitrogen no nitrogen, no nitrogen, all of a sudden nitrogen is like something's in there. And then you have to cut it out. And then, so it happens, it happens, you know what I mean? So
• 3:53
  Kevin: it's, it happens. Absolutely. And I think the. The probably the takeaway from it is, you know, you can do all the theorizing and sort of high minded thinking on it you like, but at some point you've got to cut the pipe and see if anything comes out.
• 3:54
  Because, you know, that's the only solution in the end for some things like that.
• 3:55
  Trevor: And the quicker you do that, the faster you move on. Okay. It sucks. You got another well that you got to do, but the faster you do that the, the quicker that job's going to, you're going to keep going because I've seen us struggle with a few though.
• 3:56
  There was one time we had there's like little sub coolers in cases. I can't remember if they're called tornadoes or whatever, but they used to put them in the case and there were little sub cooler suction, the liquid sub coolers, and we couldn't get this one case work at all. It was just one of those plugs in one, one of the sides on the liquid line.
• 3:57
  And that was it. So we had to cut it out, get a new one from the manufacturer. But I remember us bitching and complaining about it. You know what I mean? Now that I look back at it, it's like, just get a fix, you know, and manufacture was no problem. Send another one out.
• 3:58
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 3:59
  Trevor: It's
• 4:00
  Kevin: It's sometimes you fall into the trap of thinking that couldn't possibly happen.
• 4:01
  But eventually you've run out of all the things that you think could happen. And it probably is something like that.
• 4:02
  Trevor: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the next one here is a damage delta pi or an OPS. So these are these really the pressure differential control. There's lots of different brands out there.
• 4:03
  There's different kinds out there, but this one's I think this one's a Criwan one.
• 4:04
  Kevin: So we had a couple of pieces of equipment where when they'd been strapped to be craned into the plant room, the strap had run across, these sensors protrude slightly outside of the frame on the install we had, and the ratchet straps they were using to pick the thing up had pushed the sensor.
• 4:05
  And if anyone's ever took the end cap where it says SPO4 on the end of it there, that cap comes off and you can slide out the circuit board that's inside. And all it is that goes right up the middle of there is a little circuit board. I think it's a hall effect sensor in the ends, just a little electronic sensor.
• 4:06
  And the stress of being pushed by this strap and cracks the circuit board inside. So the sensor looked pretty much perfect from the outside on multiple compressors. But when you opened it up, the end of the board was cracked. And of course it is, if it can't see the reading from the sensor, it thinks there's no oil pressure.
• 4:07
  So none of the machines would start, but it's one of those where there's so because we had three or four machines doing it. We're like, no, it can't possibly be four faulty sensors because, you know, your brain tells you now, yeah, you might have one that's faulty, you're never going to have four. It was only when we sort of pieced together how it had happened, you know, so don't rule out the obvious answer that it's a faulty sensor just because there's one piece of evidence that says there isn't, you know, do, do your testing.
• 4:08
  We obviously link the sensor out in the end or whatever to prove it. Then when we had one apart, you could find out there was a little crack in that, you know, be, be willing to, to take the end off those sensors and things and have a look yourself because, you know, it saves guessing, you know, bit oil pressure sensors and things like that.
• 4:09
  You know, we there was an issue a while back with, there's another version of that sensor that Bitsa were using on the six cylinder machines. And there was an issue with how the oil was getting into the sensor. And it would randomly fail on low oil pressure, even though if you put a gauge on it and you can absolutely with a transcritical manifold gauge upon a, an oil pump on a transcritical compressor, you know, the oil pressure is absolutely fine.
• 4:10
  The sense of saying there's nothing. So, you know, some of those things still apply good old fashioned ways of finding things out.
• 4:11
  Trevor: It's still the same thing, like 0. 7 to 0. 9 bar, or, you know, 10 PSI. That's when they trip out. It's the same thing. So if you get your high pressure gauges on there, put it on there, check it to make sure.
• 4:12
  And you have to, you have to do these checks. One of the things that I've seen a few technicians send me in is the, the little brass piece. If you don't have that gasket on the end, it's not separating the two sides. And same on the Copeland compressors. It's not separating. So, you know, you've got good oil pressure on your gauges, but the sensor is not reading that.
• 4:13
  So you got to make sure that's on there as well. As I seen that brass piece, a technician said to me, cause there's different trip points on different ones and different pressure ratings. And they had the wrong pressure rating in, and this happens sometimes from the manufacturer. Just call them up and get the new ones.
• 4:14
  Yeah.
• 4:15
  Kevin: Just obviously bear in mind, if you're ever putting a set of gauges on a on an oil pump, on a transcritical compressor. That oil is going to want to come out very rapidly when you take the lines off. So have a cloth around it, have some PPE, because even if you switch the machine off, there's still probably going to be 27 bars worth of oil behind it.
• 4:16
  Trevor: Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. So thanks for pointing that out, because it is about safety. You should always have your PPE doing anything, working on Putting any hoses on the system realistically, you know, you get complacent out there. But with CO2, it's the same thing as HFC. You gotta just, you gotta be safe.
• 4:17
  So this one here is a failed CCM valve. So I want to talk a little bit about this. This happens. Valves do get dirty. We've seen the Corel one earlier. This one here is a Danfoss, one of the staple valves in the market.
• 4:18
  Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. So I think the, as people will probably know, the CCM has largely been superseded now by the CCMT and the CCMT is a lot easier to work on because all of those pieces are built into the head of the valve.
• 4:19
  So when you unscrew the head, it all comes out in a contained assembly. With the CCM, Danfoss didn't really want you taking it to bits because part of it was. Screwed to both the head and to the body. And you had to kind of unwind the head, but then all the things you were saying earlier on about getting the position find right on a stepper, there was no easy way to do it once you'd separated the parts of the valve.
• 4:20
  Now, what we think had happened on this one was that somebody had had the valve apart and not realized you had to thread the head back onto the guts of the valve. And. What had happened was that it had then tried to run and all the bits are just mashed each other to pieces inside the valve. And fortunately that, that rack actually had a backup.
• 4:21
  That was the receiver pressure control valve and it had a, a mechanical backup and the things running quite happily on the mechanical backup, but the electronic valves had to be valved off. And yeah, when we, when we took it apart, literally all those, or bar the brass bit, which is obviously threaded in all those bits were just lying in the bottom of the valve body.
• 4:22
  You know, kind of, kind of fortunate they didn't make a way down the pipe and end up somewhere, but they, yeah, it was just a collection of bits in the bottom of the body. So. That was good that they
• 4:23
  Trevor: had that backup in there. What were they using? Like a Dan Foss Servio valve or what was the, it was an ICS
• 4:24
  Kevin: valve.
• 4:25
  Yeah. Mechanical in that pressure regulator. It was an old unit, but yeah, mechanical pressure regulator. And you do see it occasionally, not, not so much now. I mean, a lot of systems, you know, if they've got a backup control system, we'll have just completely separate electronic valve for it, but
• 4:26
  Trevor: totally doable
• 4:27
  Kevin: with an ICS valve or similar.
• 4:28
  Trevor: Yeah, no, exactly. Because I see different depending on the manufacturers, sometimes you'll see some mechanical valves for hot gas defrost, or you'll see two backups on the high pressure valve or two, depending on the size, you know what I mean? Because once again, co2 is more expensive. So now adding all these extra components is less competitive for the manufacturer.
• 4:29
  And then we, I hear technician, why isn't there always a backup on, on all these valves? Well, yeah, They'll just put them out of, you know, in a price range. So it's difficult to see that. So you got to learn how to troubleshoot that stuff, make the system work. If the valve doesn't work.
• 4:30
  Kevin: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 4:31
  And it's, it's worth saying, you know, the electronic reliability on plant controllers, stuff like that has come on massively. In the past 10 years or so, you know, I, I used to be a really strong believer in a backup controller on everything, but actually the number of plant controllers you see now fail minimal.
• 4:32
  And you'd be in a lot of cases as well to just have a spare controller in the bottom of the panel as needed, actually backing up the system, you know, backup valves. If you've got important plant and no bad thing at all, but you know, because you've got to braise those in a lot of the time, but. I'm not, so I'm not so sure even these days that you need a backup controller on everything, the reliability as such.
• 4:33
  Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. No, we're getting better and better from all the manufacturers, which is good. Right. Because this is pushing them, pushing them harder to make better products and better competitive products.
• 4:34
  I think that was, I think that was our last slide to go through, but this, I think this is, A super great conversation. I know we'll do more of it But the the biggest thing is like when we started out This is like if you're doing a startup you're doing commission you're doing service And I know this is difficult if you're new is don't get overwhelmed start with point one Go to point two point three come up with a plan.
• 4:35
  It's like those you know, job site plan before you start any job, you should be going through that every week at least You know what? I mean when you're doing a job, what are your final thoughts? You Kevin on say a new technician going to do a startup for the first time. Like my friend that I talked to yesterday, that's on his way to a startup today for the first time.
• 4:36
  What are a few tips or tricks or some advice you'd like to give those technicians or engineers?
• 4:37
  Kevin: I'm, I'm somebody who, when I'm driving to one of these jobs or the day before or whatever else I'll be planning in my mind, what the critical steps are to get that job done. You know, because like you say, what will happen is you'll get to site.
• 4:38
  Not everything will be perfect, but it's really important. You know, when the start point is, you know, where the end point is, you know. You know, start starting a system up is a lot of the same things as doing service. You know, you take something that isn't working and make it working and putting gas in, getting settings, right?
• 4:39
  All those things don't get lost down a rabbit hole. When you go on site of chasing something that isn't important, know where you've got to be. Yeah. I've got to get these things tested. I've got to get the plant vacuumed. I've got to get. You know, I've got to get oil in, whatever. No, the critical steps don't get to the end of the first day or the first week and go, I've spent half my time working on that evaporator up there.
• 4:40
  Stay on your path. You know, it's. Commissioning is not a really, really difficult technical task. It's a series of small service type tasks, but bolted together into a big project. Something you might do when you go to site, if you've just changed an evaporator, you know, something you'll do on that, multiplied by 20 times as you go around the site, you know, and just keep on your path.
• 4:41
  You know, if you're working with other guys or girls or whatever on the site, And the easy temptation is to all go around as a pack because it's working with your friends, you know, right? You can have a bit of a laugh and all that. Make sure people are doing things that are contributing to the overall project.
• 4:42
  You know, you can come, you can have a chat at the end of the day or whatever, or have lunch or whatever and see where everyone's at, but have a plan, stick to it, work through the steps because it's, it's not as difficult as you think. It's just, it's an exercise in organization. You know, and, and planning that's, that's the biggest thing you can, the difference between doing service and doing commissioning is all planning and organization.
• 4:43
  Trevor: Yeah, and if you can be that technician to do that, you're going to go so far in that company so quickly. I talk to bosses and service managers and owners all the time. They're like i'm looking for some guys that can lead my guy, my team or you know what I mean? Like that they can get out the site and they can help direct some people because that's what happens too.
• 4:44
  Like sometimes you do have a foreman on the site or a project manager or a A lead on there, but it, sometimes it takes the technician to be like, okay, you work on this. Here's the plan. What, what can you work on today? What, what do you feel like you can get accomplished? This is what I'm going to do.
• 4:45
  And this is what you can do. Let's split up. Let's get it done. You know, because you don't want to be just sitting there watching someone the whole time.
• 4:46
  Kevin: And don't, don't be bossed around into somebody telling you how to do your job when you're doing it. You were there. If you're there as a startup tech, and let's say the pipe guy is saying to you, well, I need you to do this.
• 4:47
  It's like, yeah, okay, if, if I've got capacity to do that now, I'll do that now, but I need to get this done. You know, don't just because even if he or she has got 20 years more experience than you, you know what you're there to do and you can help them out a bunch if you've got time, but you know, say, okay, I need to get this on vac and I'll come and have a look at that for you.
• 4:48
  You know, it's really easy to get. dragged along with what somebody else's priorities are stick to what you know, and what you know, you need to do.
• 4:49
  Trevor: Yeah. And that's the best thing when you do that plan. A lot of people don't do this. They just go and they figure someone's going to tell them always what to do.
• 4:50
  And that's fine. But if you want to take that responsibility to really talk with the people about it, can you accomplish this in this amount of time? And they're going to say yes or no, you know what I mean? They might run into an issue where they think they're going to get it done in two hours But it takes them three hours like we talked about but at at hopefully at that point they can come You can all get back together.
• 4:51
  Where are you at? How far are we there? We got to be here at this time and a lot of people don't want to take that responsibility because it is a lot of work But if you're a technician out there right now and you think you can start taking that responsibility It starts with that first job And it's just asking questions.
• 4:52
  What is the checklist we got to do today? Where we are today? Where we want to be this evening and then at the end of the day reflect on that day Did we make it or did we make it to where we needed it? No, we ran into this problem We ran into this problem this problem Okay How much time do we need again tomorrow to spend on that before we can start our new day?
• 4:53
  And think of it as a new day and and then this compounds and it builds until you get this really functioning co2 rack Awesome, kevin These conversations are awesome. We're going to do it again. Because this, this is it. If you're out there listening, you're driving around these, these are the CO2 experts and Kevin has done it.
• 4:54
  He's been involved. He's seen the issues and he sees the success a hundred percent. Share this with your friends that are working on CO2 or even in refrigeration, because this is going to really help them grow. Kevin. Thank you so much for taking the time. We'll see you at the next podcast.
• 4:55
  Kevin: Really appreciate it, Trevor.