Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 227. Getting to Know Transcritical CO2 Supermarket Refrigeration Systems with Kevin Mullis

Transcript

Episode 227. Getting to Know Transcritical CO2 Supermarket Refrigeration Systems with Kevin Mullis · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  So Kevin, welcome to the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast. How are you doing brother?
• 0:01
  Yeah. Thanks for having me Trevor. It's uh, I've been watching some of your podcasts for a little while and I thought I'd like to get on that.
• 0:02
  Maybe I can offer something useful and uh, yeah. Thank you for the opportunity.
• 0:03
  Uh, I appreciate to hear that. So I know we, even over the last few years, we've been posting and commenting on our posts. You, you have lots of great posts and you have a lot of great CO2 knowledge. So you've been doing it for many, many years. , why don't you tell us a little bit about your backstory? Cause I know you started in refrigeration a long time ago. You put a lot of work in the field. You, you grew up throughout the field and now you're running in, uh, Manager and doing lots of projects, working with lots of field guys. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your backstory.
• 0:04
  Yeah, sure. No problem. So yeah, it's no 21 years coming up now, uh, in the industry. So, I mean, I, funnily enough, I actually, um, read a similar comment on one of the forums the other day. Somebody who started similar to myself. I. Before getting into refrigeration, I worked in a store doing sort of maintenance, light maintenance in the store in the sort of early 2000s and it brought me into contact with the refrigeration guys and they, they looked to me like they had the most interesting job and I was sort of like, What am I going to do with my life at this point?
• 0:05
  You know, I'd finished school and I was, I was in a, I was in a, in a zip. I didn't know where I was going. And so they looked like they had a really interesting job and I, I bugged and I bugged until, , until the manager of the, the local, uh, refrigeration company took me on, and so that was around about 2003, I started on installations.
• 0:06
  Doing pipe work, , you know, pressure testing, all that good stuff in supermarkets, the occasional food factory and what have you. Went into service, mostly Freons, obviously at that point, , we did sort of a lot of supermarkets, shop, little shops, food factories, farms, occasionally, wide range of stuff, .
• 0:07
  And sort of along that, along that journey, along came CO2, sort of late 2000s for me. And it, there was one particular supermarket that had what a lot of places had as their earlier system, which was a, like a pump circulation system around the cabinets with a Freon rack. cooling the co2 and it was totally different to anything we were working on and that got my interest and as luck would have it we, my company, had a training center set up in one of the local branches where they had almost a mirror of that setup.
• 0:08
  And I remember saying, I want in on this, this is going to be big in the future. So that, that system never really in the UK became popular beyond that one supermarket and then transcritical came along. We upgraded our training setup and I'd sort of, as I tend to do, just kept pushing until somebody listens to me.
• 0:09
  I ended up getting involved with a little bit of running of the training school. It was actually because they put the transcritical rack in. and there were some things not working properly on it when I came to do my training and being being bolshy as I am I said I'm out and make that work.
• 0:10
  Yeah, yeah, I love
• 0:11
  that.
• 0:12
  And so they sort of said well go on then and so got into that like that and and transcritical over here got much bigger in Late 2000s, early 2010s, you know, and it's sort of been growing ever since. So yeah, along that period, unfortunately, bound about 2013, the company I was working for went bust, but we got moved into the company.
• 0:13
  And with now integral, um, and I ended up taking on this job. Um, and I've been at that ever since, which. Gives me good freedom to sort of access all areas of the refrigeration business, really.
• 0:14
  Yeah, that's amazing. Like, like you said that you were consistent, you push your way, because the beginning I had to do exactly the same thing to get into supermarket and commercial refrigeration.
• 0:15
  I had to go and do the pipe work. I had to do the nights. I had to do the, you know, glue and insulation and then just prove myself each step of the way, bust my butt. Getting that stuff in installing cases. And, and this is what I tell a lot of the younger, younger generation, younger texts, like you got to get and do some of this stuff.
• 0:16
  And this is where you get that hands on experience. You get that was life experience because you're not used to getting up at nine o'clock at night to go to work. You know what I mean? You come out of school and you're just like, Oh, everybody works day jobs and stuff. And you do this, but I learned so much from the people, you know, that, that were around me, just the things that I seen to what goes into building.
• 0:17
  What are your thoughts on that, doing the first start, uh, starting out in construction? I think that
• 0:18
  is 100 percent the best way to do it. And It's funny you saying how your experience of it was very much similar to mine. So I stepped out of working, you know, early starts, you know, six o'clock or whatever as, you know, what you consider an early start before you get into refrigeration and working at the store.
• 0:19
  And my first week in refrigeration, I walked into the office and the manager said, go home. You're on nights. And I was on nights for the next three months. You know, and it's, to say it's a bit of a culture shock is probably a bit of a statement, you know, but no, I do think it is the best way to approach the industry because often if you start on service and service is all you've ever done, you tend to, what's the best way to put it, brazing, for example, or not sure how to bend the pipe or whatever the best way to, to put the system together and, you know, Yeah, whilst you're doing that construction side of it, you, you don't necessarily learn everything about how the system works.
• 0:20
  What you do learn is how to put it together, you know, and what you like to see. Even silly things like identifying pipe sizes, you know. I mean, I'm, I'm more rusty than I once was, but obviously when, when you were doing it every day, I could look at that and go, that's two and five eighths, you know, or that's five eighths, you know, without even giving it a second glance.
• 0:21
  And that's it. It's, it's things that you, you get from doing that side of it, isn't it? And it's the work ethic, isn't it? Because like you say, it's the, the hours you have to keep and the timescales you're working to.
• 0:22
  Yeah. And I had this conversation with lots of people and there's lots of service people.
• 0:23
  No way I would never go in and do that. But I know for sure, all the people that I know who started out in construction, they're some of the top service technicians that I know. And the top refrigeration technicians I know across the world, they can do both. They can go and do construction, they can go do service and, and that's just making you well, better, well rounded.
• 0:24
  So I like, like hearing that. So in the field for many years, then you moved into working kind of the training center, all that here I seen, um, secondary systems back in, yeah, say 2011, 2010, I worked on glycol systems, but not really CO2 pump system, but it was around 2011, 2012. Um, So tell me a little bit about your, your training experience, that, that unit that you seen that wasn't working.
• 0:25
  Right. And you're like, you're curious. This is, this is important in refrigeration, more curious you are, the better you're going to
• 0:26
  be. So the, the training rig, , it was, so as I say, originally designed to be, if you, there was, it was like a little mini supermarket, um, there was a cold store that was like five or six cases.
• 0:27
  And there was the rack of the pump station in the middle, and originally it was a R 4 0 7 F rack, if I remember correctly, or 4 0 7 8. And then they, they cut that out and put the trans-critical rack in there. But because it was designed, it was actually designed to be copy of something we put into a major department store in the uk and they, they wanted to sort of double up and use the training on both.
• 0:28
  And so it had backups for everything so. The, the thing that I sort of start with is the receiver pressure control valve, the flash tank control valve was the electronic one wasn't working and it was purely running on the mechanical backup valve. Um, I was sort of like, well, why is it running on that one?
• 0:29
  And why is the other one valved off? And it doesn't work. And, yeah, and like I said, that sort of got me like, well, it should work. Why is it not working? And it was, uh, you, I know you've done some, some podcasts with RDM. It was a, it was a very early. RDM CO2 pack controller on it. And it was, it was just the way that it did wired and configured that it couldn't run.
• 0:30
  So I was sort of like, yeah, let me add it then. And we got it going and we could run it on the electronic valve quite happily. And I found a couple of other issues that because there was a backup for everything, there was a backup for the high pressure valve control as well. And it was. It was how we got all that to work as it should and still have the backups available rather than using the backups all the time.
• 0:31
  , but again, this was relatively early in the, in how Transcritical was over here. So the pressures were quite low compared to what we work with now. You know, it had a 45 bar suction on it, 52 bar liquid, you know, and all those pressures have gone up now. And in terms of obviously what I'm sure what you're seeing as well, you know, it's, um, some, some of that early stuff was a little bit temperamental if it didn't run right, but yeah, so I, I got those bits going and, , There was two or three guys, really good guys running the training school on a daily basis.
• 0:32
  And it just so happened that none of them were available at one point. This is before the, the training course was formalized by City and Guilds. This is when we were one of the few providers operating CO2 training, but it was our design course. And, engineering director at the company I was working, I happened to be in the office and he called me and he said, any, any chance you could do the trading this week?
• 0:33
  And I was like, midway between, yeah, go then, and complete fear. And I was like, yeah, I like wrote him an email back going, I can, but please understand I've not done this before, blah, blah, blah. And he, he said, yeah, fine, go do it. So yeah. Hand on heart Trevor, it probably wasn't the best course I've ever delivered.
• 0:34
  No, it was probably a great one because that's where you learn probably a ton. You know what I mean? Because a little bit of fear, a little bit of curiosity.
• 0:35
  Yeah, so we shared it out for a while then after that with who was available to do the training. Eventually it got formalized into city and guilds structure and you had to undertake a training qualification to lead it.
• 0:36
  And I, I stayed on it, assisting on it during that period, but because I couldn't sit the full training course, I just wasn't in a position to do it. But yeah, I stayed involved with it until we shut it down then in the sort of like 2014, 2015. It was a good thing to do a lot. I would say of that time, probably 60 70 percent of those who were doing CO2 training came through our training course.
• 0:37
  , we, the reason we, we stopped doing it really was that we'd done basic training along with the other providers. , For everyone and it needed to evolve. It needed to become more a fault finding training center, you know, where you could take that next step.
• 0:38
  Yep. And that would have took a lot of investment and there just, there wasn't enough market for it, really.
• 0:39
  , definitely and that's the thing I think in training and sharing that knowledge with others you learn so much more I don't think people understand the amount of things that you have to do as a trainer instructor or a lead hand or lead technician because when someone asks you a question and you don't know it you'd be like I don't know you got to go do the research And then you're going to go find out, and then you got to play around with it.
• 0:40
  Then you got to break it sometimes a little bit, and then you got to fix it. And then you're going to, you know what I mean? And it just gives you a deep in depth thing. If it's on electrical, if it's on controls, if it's on piping, whatever it is. So, so that's pretty, pretty amazing. So, so you evolved from there.
• 0:41
  That's back 2015, 2014, 2015. And then you got into more of a technical management role. Is that correct? That's right. Yeah.
• 0:42
  So I. Yeah, again, I, it's, it's my personality. Trevor, I bug people all the time, but I just, I was, I started saying, I'd been doing startups commissioning for a couple of years before that.
• 0:43
  And I started saying, I think there's a gap for me to do more. What can I do? That's more. And I mean, if you, if you, if you want the actual truth, what happened was they said at the time, yeah, we can't, we can't really do anything for you at the minute and I got a job offer to be a supervisor somewhere else.
• 0:44
  The actual truth is I, I came back and said, I'm going to leave. I'm going to go be a supervisor somewhere else. And they said, well, we don't want you to leave. What can we do? And that's, that's essentially where it came from, but it did, it did grow into an actual role. I like to think where I could be useful, but I don't think I'm alone in that, to be honest, you know, the, the industry is full of people who get a better job offer and you know, it, it sort of leads back to them staying, but with a different role, doesn't it?
• 0:45
  It's the way of the industry, really.
• 0:46
  Yeah. And I think that's a, one of the. The issues is that a lot of people don't have direction for a technician. So technician goes through his career and he starts to. Building or her starts to build up knowledge and they do the construction, they do the service, but after seven, eight, nine years, it's what's that next step?
• 0:47
  And a lot of people don't have that because they need the people to do the work. And this is where I'm working with a lot of contracts around the world is like, you need that next step because we, for me, I love the field work. I love doing it. But as I got older, it was getting harder, you know, and I wanted another challenge.
• 0:48
  I, I completely agree. And I, when I, even when I came off of doing service into doing startups, you know, I, My conversation with my wife was that I don't hate doing what I'm doing now. I could continue to do it for however many years, but it's, I just got that urge. I need to do something else now, you know, to do more, you know, and that's, that's the thing.
• 0:49
  Isn't it's really easy to stay in the role you're in when you, when you like it, you know, and you've got to have that drive to want to move and do a bit more, you know, take the risk. You know, you might not be good at it. You might be good at it, but you don't, you know, it's, you've got to that point where you're good at what you're doing.
• 0:50
  It's taking that next step, isn't it?
• 0:51
  And that's difficult because it is fun. You know, you like it and it, then it gets comfortable because you, you went through the trials and tribulations of, bend the racks down, what do I do? And, yeah. I can't figure this problem out and you're there for hours and, and, but you get that experience and you learn that stuff and it gets easier and easier, but what's that next step.
• 0:52
  And not a lot of people have that next step for their, for their team. Some of the companies are starting to figure it out, but I work with technicians all the time to try to help them with that because you had the personality to go in and say, listen, I need to move up. I need to move along this journey, but there's a lot of technicians that don't.
• 0:53
  They don't have that, you know, they're just waiting for the service manager to come up with the role for them, or they're waiting for the boss to say, okay, I got this role for you. And it doesn't happen like that. It just doesn't.
• 0:54
  No, it doesn't. And actually, the, the other thing you said before is completely right.
• 0:55
  When you do move into one of those roles, everything you tell that the, those who you're supporting. You've got to be absolutely sure that's right, because that will become gospel amongst that team eventually, you know, they'll, they'll pass it on and they'll pass it on to somebody else and they'll pass it on to somebody else.
• 0:56
  And if it's wrong. You've just sort of proliferated that wrong thing into your whole team, you know, and it's, you've got to be doubly sure, you know, and that's, that is, I think, one of the challenges of when you do sort of take that step up. Yeah.
• 0:57
  And it's a lot of work. It's not, it's not easy. You know, it's hard going, going from construction to service is super hard going from service to construction, super hard going from service to startup is super hard.
• 0:58
  Like there's the process are there and we've got to spend the time to learn it. Like anything, you know, it just takes time to do it, get your hands dirty. Um, so right now you're, you're doing projects. You, you, you did tons of large industrial projects, CO2 transcritical. Let's talk about some of that. So some of the learning, learnings you had over your career, because you were in the training and I did a lot of training too.
• 0:59
  I did training for, I still do training. So years and years, almost a decade now of training for me. And, uh, I learned a ton. You know, so you started on one system, then you evolve your knowledge a bit more, but let's talk a little bit about your role, , in the technical manager side. I'm starting to see these bigger projects.
• 1:00
  Yeah, sure. So, um, yeah, I mean, actually, we, we did our first, Like, one megawatt plus transcritical in 2014, 2015. Uh, which was just when I was sort of moving into this, this role. And, there were different limits to what there are now. And, I don't just mean in terms of pressures and things. The, the size of equipment on transcritical just wasn't the same.
• 1:01
  You know, I mean, the first, the first racks we put in on that project, were based on the bits of four cylinder compressors. And you needed, I think we had four, three, 400 kilowatt racks and one about 300 kilowatt. Yeah. And you needed seven HD compressors to do that in those days, you know, and it was, there was a lot of learning about how to do things at the macro scale, you know, because the, the transcritical in the, in the stores was, was smaller.
• 1:02
  So, I mean, that, that then progressed to the, Some of these, um, so that, that one you've got up there is, uh, a little store installation actually, which, um, was Aldi in the UK. I know Aldi are putting CO2 in across the world now. Um, and actually, in a, in a weird coincidence, perhaps not a weird coincidence, the, the guy who was running refrigeration for Aldi in the UK at that point was the guy who I worked with when I started my career.
• 1:03
  Wow. Awesome. So we've, we've, we've kind of met up several times where he's moved around companies that I've been in different positions, but he was very keen to get CO2 in and there's a, a very supportive consultant. Awesome. Works with Aldi on the, um, specification for things like this and yeah, so this, this particular, , setup on the Aldi's does, , all of the chilled cases and the frozen food store room and it does store heating.
• 1:04
  , and it was, there was actually a lot of learning in that because , heating off the refrigeration only is diminishing returns, isn't it? The better you make the refrigeration energy wise, the less energy you have available for heating. Um, you know, and so you always had to solve the problem of the winter because of the winter, the store went cold.
• 1:05
  Which meant the fridges were doing no work, which meant the heating was doing nothing, which meant the store got colder, you know, and so we clocked pretty early on with that, that we'd have to have a false load, a slave evaporator outside to generate some heat in the system. So that gas cooler there, for example, , has an evaporator coil above the gas cooler coil and when there was no heat going on this door we could switch that coil on obviously using the gas cooler fans and generate some load and obviously that that's all great because you can ramp your head pressure up then to generate your water temperature and all that good stuff but You've got to have some load to do it.
• 1:06
  You know, you can do all the head pressure ramping and gas cooler bypass and all that stuff that you like, but if you've got no load, nothing's going to happen. It's just going to sit there and go, what do I do next? Um, so let's
• 1:07
  talk about that a little bit, because I, I know lots of, , contractors now doing Renos.
• 1:08
  You know, CO2 Renos, and this is where they struggle because the end user now, you know, you didn't start 20 years ago. You had three months to do a store, you know what I mean? You had time. Now the guy's got six weeks to do a store. It's like, and with a more complex animal, , and I, I talked to guys all the time.
• 1:09
  They're like, Trevor, I'm running into issues with low load situation. We, everyone talks about the high pressure and in the summer and all worried about all this stuff. Yeah. But it's the middle of the winter or low load situation. That's the biggest problem. I'd love to dive into that a little bit more on, because I'm sure you've been involved with rentals now, um, over the years.
• 1:10
  And so you're going from say an HFC store. So a 407 AF, 404, it doesn't even matter. And you're going to CO2. There's not like you can use some of the rack. It's like you got it. You're switching over to a brand new system. Um, what are some of the things that you saw for these low loads? What are some of the things that you did to help it?
• 1:11
  Because what's happening is that. The end user saying to the contractor, we got product coming today. I'm like, we don't even have the cases. You've got product coming today, you know? Yeah,
• 1:12
  yeah, yeah. And the store's like 50
• 1:13
  degrees. So what are some of the things that you did to, um, maybe mitigate some of that low load situations where the practice won't start?
• 1:14
  Yeah. So the. The biggest thing with, with those, um, in, in terms of needing the heating was to put the false load coil on you, you don't get anything out of it, but you, in, in the time period, you can see it when the, it's obviously the false load needs to defrost eventually, right? You know, cause you're running that thing at like minus 15 evaporating.
• 1:15
  So it needs to defrost eventually. And you can see the rack just goes, and it'll stop. Um, yeah, I mean, we, we generally found that the. The cabinet side of it will, will tick over. It just won't give you any heat. And, you know, the, the only way you get it is to pull some out from outside. And you do need to think of it more like an AC, really.
• 1:16
  You know, you need to pull some heat in from outside. Because once you get it moving, you're fine. CO2's, especially, CO2 is lazy. CO2 does not want to go anywhere unless you push it. You know, and it will, it will just sit in the bit of the system it wants to sit in and, you know, you think, well, I got a minute, there's, there's like 40 bar pushing it into 32 bar, but it'll move slowly, even at that, you know, you've got to give it some oomph to push it round.
• 1:17
  And, I mean, one of the things we did find, actually, funnily enough, with doing the, the false load setup, having the coil on top of the gas cooler. Is, obviously you've got to run the gas cooler fans to do that, so you then pull air over that ambient air in the winter, that's at, let's say, zero degrees C or whatever, that CO2 that's in the gas cooler coil, you know, is sat, sat between that cold air and the evaporator.
• 1:18
  That CO2 is going to be 80 bar, you know, 1, 000 psi, 1, 200, 1, 200 psi at zero degrees. And it's a really odd situation for CO2 to be at 80 bar and zero degrees C. So it, it comes out through the high pressure valve and it's so lazy. It doesn't, none of it flashes off when it hits the vessel. It just drops in the vessel.
• 1:19
  Yeah, and you don't normally when you're doing that, you're generating a load of flash gas. So your packs got something to do is it's starting to run, but it's so lazy. It just drops in the vessel. And the, you, what you see is the receiver pressure, even though your system's feeding comes down and down and down and down and down and the system equalizes out.
• 1:20
  And you're like, you can watch it on the graphs and you're like, what is happening with that rack? And so then you've got to start bypassing the gas cooler and bringing discharge straight onto the top of the vessel to stir it up. But again, that's a bit of a blackout because If you just ram that bypass open, you'll just knock the pack over in five minutes.
• 1:21
  You know, you'll, you'll send it over a high intermediate pressure or high discharge because you give it way too much to do. So there's a lot of, a lot of work and a lot of time goes into balancing that out. But yeah, I mean, in short, when nothing runs, you've got to give it some external load. You know, it doesn't, there isn't enough within the store, certainly not before you get customers in there.
• 1:22
  And that's the thing. And there's a lot of, this is new, you know, in Europe, it's been around for 20 years. Okay. And CO2 has been a long time, but it's still new for a lot of people come coming in, depending on where you're at in Europe, in Australia, in Canada, because I've trained people all around the world and they worked on supermarkets, but this is another different animal.
• 1:23
  So even the older guys have been doing it for like 20 years. It's not like they can just jump in and help. The younger guys, if they'd never worked on CO2 before and then getting these projects and I keep seeing it is like the timelines are getting shorter and shorter. It doesn't even give them enough time to figure, figure a lot of products
• 1:24
  outside.
• 1:25
  We've got to get it in. I mean, one, one thing that we, we did find doing the. Doing really rapid turnaround projects like that is we, we got early on myself and my, my colleague into a couple of the first doors so we could get parameter files sorted out and we pulled case setting files out that we checked and double checked to make sure they were right.
• 1:26
  Holdroom files and even rack settings so that when somebody was on a renovation and they had like 48 hours to turn it around. You know, once that rack had gone and back, then they could just bang parameter files in. You know, yeah, they may have to tweak a little bit here and there for a store specific But it was going to be good enough once they've done their checks to get that system away.
• 1:27
  Do you find?
• 1:28
  And I don't know if this is the same in Europe, but do you find that it's tough to get those? parameter sets from the manufacturer to For like the field technicians, because I know I've talked to so many guys here, I'm trying to get it, , the parameter set, you know, and sometimes they're putting the same set in the same unit, but they're different units.
• 1:29
  So when I put it in, it crashes the rack. Is that the same thing in Europe and the UK? So
• 1:30
  it, it can be, I mean, what, what we tend to find when we did the Aldi turnaround, for example, with the, I say quite a, you know, very sort of forward thinking consultant, they working with. Aldi, they put together a compendium of all the settings that they wanted in the fixtures based on what the manufacturer had supplied and the setup like that has got more power to extract the parameters from the company, haven't they?
• 1:31
  The difficulty we found in the wider field is that a lot of the manufacturers will give you a temperature set point, , and some alarm set points, maybe a defrost schedule. But They won't go into a lot more detail than that with the parameters, because, you know, we, we look after, , a refrigeration cabinet test lab, um, because they, they'll use a specific brand of controller in that test lab, and half of the settings that they've got in there, even if they gave you a full list, it won't be relevant when you take it out into the field and you put it on a different controller, so they're going to give you, at best, a basic set, you know, your temperature set point, your number of defrosts per day, but that might not suit you when you get in the field.
• 1:32
  And of course, the other thing is that when that cabinet sat in the test lab, It, I'm not sure what the, the, um, US slash Canada standard is, but we European standard ISO three for the cabinet, 60 percent humidity, 25, um, 25 degrees, you know, it's really easy to defrost a cabinet. If your ambient temperature is 25 degrees, you know, you go to a real store when the aisle temperatures like 10 degrees, you know, because you've got fridges either side, it's a hell of a lot harder to defrost that cabinet.
• 1:33
  You know you there is always a little bit of a little bit of tweaking going on with that
• 1:34
  Yeah, and this is what I do in a lot of my training programs trying to teach the guys how to extrapolate the The set points and the parameters because that's what a lot of guys don't know. So I get them to go in and look at them and even if they don't understand them at that point, you can at least you have now a baseline kind of like you did back in the day.
• 1:35
  You get that case control. You go in and you get every parameter. If there's a hundred, if there's a thousand doesn't matter and then go in and then you break it down. What does this really mean? Like I'm reading it. It says it's supposed to be at the, you know, 40 bar, 20 bar, 10, whatever the temperature, you know what I mean?
• 1:36
  What does that really mean? If you don't know, then you go ask somebody, you know, and that's, that's where you start to learn. And that, I think the biggest thing, and I think the evolution of supermarket refrigeration is going to help. My goal is to help more. Of the guys on the control side, because I think a lot of people struggle, especially like the, the older guys, because they're coming from the mechanical world, right?
• 1:37
  I go in and I adjust it and something happens that doesn't happen when you get a full complex system with VFDs, all electronic valves, um, Capacity control compressor. So it's, uh, I think it's important to take the time to figure it out. And now there's so many controllers.
• 1:38
  Yeah. Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent.
• 1:39
  Yeah. And you know, with supermarkets especially, , incredibly electronics heavy, you know, you, you move into the industrial heavy commercial world. By and large, it's still. A lot simpler in terms of the mechanicals because a lot of the stuff is brute force. You know, you, you're doing hundreds of kilowatts and you just need to move it around, you know?
• 1:40
  And, and some of 'em will have a fancy PLC on it, but you're not going to, you're not gonna learn that PLC and take it to 20 different sites. 'cause it'll be specific to that site. When you get into supermarkets, then density of the electronics is, is something to behold. But I mean, I think one thing, um, you were just saying there in, you know, in terms of.
• 1:41
  Get all your settings that, you know, make that system work to start with one thing. I think I learned reasonably early on. Once you have some confidence in understanding what those settings do. And even if that means, let's say it's a Corel controller and you've gone and downloaded the manual, you've looked in that settings list and you go, well, that I'm reading what that setting does.
• 1:42
  It doesn't make sense to me what they're saying. I should set it to, don't be afraid to ask the question because some it's, again, it's a bit like we were saying earlier, you know, Um, that may well have been set in that compendium or that settings list, like because of a misconception, because somebody said it was the right thing to do.
• 1:43
  And, you know, if you're looking at it and it doesn't make sense, ask the question on it, because it may be somebody that's just misinterpreted what it does, or they may be telling you to, to change a setting in every controller that makes absolutely no difference to the operation because that feature isn't enabled, but if you have to do that setting.
• 1:44
  Um, 50 different controllers in the store takes time, you know, and you, if you can leave it on the default, because it makes absolutely no difference, then leave it on the default. It's, it's, that's, I think the next level of, of understanding that, you know, rather get your basic settings, get it working. But then, you know, if you get a chance to look at it and go, why, why is that happening?
• 1:45
  Wait, why am I changing that for, you know, why am I configuring input for there's nothing wired to it? You know, then, you know, let's, let's have that conversation and make sure that you're not doing things for the sake of it because especially on renovations, it's all time.
• 1:46
  And you, we got to reduce the time just so that.
• 1:47
  , you don't feel stressed out when it comes down to the finish line and that, and that's a big thing. It does take time to set up a case controller versus setting up just a TXV.
• 1:48
  Yeah, and yeah, and not all control systems let you download the parameter file. You know some very good control systems don't let you download the parameter file And you know if you've got to do all those manually and you're putting in five that don't need to be there on 50 controllers Sometime you're investing in it.
• 1:49
  Yeah. No
• 1:50
  exactly exactly. So It's a I think that's one of the big things that we will continue to evolve I think we're going to because it's not it's not heavy in the The trade schools here, even in North America, , CO2. I think I train a lot of, a lot of the people in CO2 rounds, but I think we need to get it more.
• 1:51
  And we'll get more involved here in the rest of the world, but there's only here, I think 3000 stores, you know, out of the 50 or 80, 000 stores or whatever across North America. So that's just still a small percentage. We still need to train all those other guys and people to work on supermarkets, which are still have an HFC.
• 1:52
  So there's a transition happening now. And I think the conversation we're having now in 10 years is going to be like, we're going to have more and more people like, you know, Potentially the same way it was in the UK and Europe 10 years ago, right? More and more people see it. They go out. Do they still need training?
• 1:53
  100 percent. You still need training and the consistent training. That's why you're so good. You've been doing training each year. You still invest in yourself and you're learning and growing. That's what I keep telling a lot of people. If you want to get better, it's not, you just don't go to one training.
• 1:54
  You don't just come to the refrigeration mentor training and just do it once. You got to train consistently because if you don't see it for six months or a year, you're not going to remember that stuff. Right.
• 1:55
  I agree. And I think actually one of the things that it's, if you come off the tools, if you like, you know, come into a management position, it, you've got to actively, you know, make yourself keep up to date with what's happening because it's really easy to, to get behind with things, you know, it's.
• 1:56
  It stuff changes so quickly, you know, even controller specs and settings and, and stuff like that, you know, you've, you've got, you've got to be involved with it still. And one of the things I've. Sort of always tried to sort of keep on top of with that is, you know, I'm, people are asking me for advice, let's say on how something's set up or how something should be working.
• 1:57
  How can I, with confidence, give them that information unless I've witnessed it for myself on site or I'm up to date with it. You know? And I think it's really, it can be really easy to, to get out. I've seen it with people, you know, you, you get out of touch with reality and you start giving people information from two, three years ago.
• 1:58
  It's no use to them. Things have evolved in that time. It changes really quickly, especially in the CO2 fields.
• 1:59
  , I'm seeing that here. Like I, I'm talking to people about like, just even the regulation changes. And they're just like, what are, you know, and it just, it's just happening. It's just happening so fast where the manufacturers may know about it because they have to deal with it.
• 2:00
  They have to build the equipment towards it, but that information is not being passed down fast enough in the right ways. I see. Cause we're the really good at talking internally. You know, I was at an event this week and you know, it's great. All these people here, these managers, high level people, CEOs can talk about it and they hear about it, but it's not getting to the people that are dealing with a day to day a lot of the time.
• 2:01
  That's absolutely right. Absolutely right. Yeah. And it's, it's getting that information to the people. To the guys who need it is really challenging. , you know, and it's multiple times you'll be, uh, you know, you, a new, new controller comes out, new parameter list or upgraded parameters and yeah, okay. You can download it usually, but you know, do you have to go into a secure area on a website to do it?
• 2:02
  Is it practical? On the shop floor at a supermarket where you've got no signal on your phone, you know, and it's, it's how you, you keep passing that information through, isn't it?
• 2:03
  Yeah. And the thing is, is that we were, we're there and already working. We got it. We're putting out a fire. We're trying to fix something and people are expecting, you know, all learn on the job, learn hands on, but that's not, that's a stressful way to learn.
• 2:04
  And so you're not learning the full aspect of what you should be learning. And I see this time and time. I see, I have a lot of technicians that I work with that know how to fix the problem. But they don't know why. Yeah. And that's, that's the thing where I'm trying to teach them the why. And then, then when it starts to click, then the other things start to make more sense.
• 2:05
  They're like, Oh man, okay, this happens because of that. And because of that, now that makes sense. And now they can troubleshoot better. Right. Because they're like, well, I know this happens. And when that happens, when I'm looking at the graph, it must be this. So let's go adjust this and this, but don't really understand.
• 2:06
  Have you noticed that as well?
• 2:07
  Yeah. And it's, I think the thing is because everyone's under time pressure when they do service calls, especially really easy to go to the shortcut. And say, you know, what, one of the big things I used to have a lot of time was a lot of, uh, electronic expansion valve controllers back in 10 years ago, maybe didn't use transducers to work out suit me.
• 2:08
  They used an inlet probe and an outlet probe, and we had a lot of customers where the inlet probe was prone to failure and it's, you know, it was well known that most of the time, if the inlet probe is reading high, you change that problem goes away, but. I don't think necessarily the knowledge of why that solved the problem was there, you know, and I, I was really lucky when I was working early as I worked with some really good people, you know, they, they wouldn't tell you they were really good, but they were really good.
• 2:09
  And, you know, you, you could learn a lot about why things went wrong from those people. And I think it's really important that people still get that support these days. Okay. You changed the internet probe, but you tell me why. That then solved the problem with it, because, like you say, going to the shortcut will help you out 50 percent of the time.
• 2:10
  But, the other 50 percent of the time, you'll be scratching your head going, well, that probe looks like it's okay, so why isn't it working this time? You know, and you've got to, you've got to have some understanding of why it's not getting cold, you know, and it's understanding the start point of, you know, okay, so I lose the in that probe reading.
• 2:11
  Why, why does that stop getting cold is a really good start then for when you come to something, when it isn't that, but yeah, it's, you've got to have, I think the only way now, because people move quite quickly into doing a service as well is to have a good support network, you know, people who can give you good information and to access information, you know, because there is a lot more information from the likes of yourselves out there now, you know, that, than there probably was 10, 12 years ago.
• 2:12
  Oh, for sure. And, and that's another thing that I have to teach my students is like doing research and going through manuals. Cause there's so much, like they can go up to in one day, four different major controllers. You know, and that's, that's tough. Like it takes years to learn one of them. Um, so trying to teach them how to be quicker on research because you can go on and you can get into a rabbit hole and you're spending 45 minutes to an hour looking up an issue that is, might not even be in the right direction of the problem.
• 2:13
  It's can be really tough because the, one of the downsides or most of having a lot of electronics is you get a heck of a lot of information that you perhaps didn't get when it was all mechanical, but it can be really easy. Like you said, to go down a rabbit hole. Of looking at all that information and miss something really fundamental that's physically wrong with it.
• 2:14
  And, you know, there's a, there's a time and a place for using all those graphs and data points and everything you can get, but it's making sure that the guys understand that you, you need to do the basic physical stuff first. You know, it's, it's a coil, got any frost on it? You know, is that, is that gas in the back?
• 2:15
  Is that, is it iced up? You know, because ice ups are the worst, aren't they? If it's iced up the back of the cabinet. Uh, Somebody will look at it and go, well, right. And then they'll go start looking at the computer and looking at all the data. And they'd be like, why is the expansion valve not opening? You know, you, you could have solved all this by putting your hand over the grill at the back and finding there's no air coming out of it.
• 2:16
  You know, too much information can almost send you in a worse direction than not enough.
• 2:17
  I've seen, uh, I've seen that too. I've talked to service managers saying the guys are going out and trying to troubleshoot the problem through the. Uh, PLC, you know, through the thing in the first step is you got to go do all the touchy feely looking, hearing, listening before you, you dive into that stuff because yeah, if the fans aren't running, you're not going to get any flow like, you know,
• 2:18
  check that doesn't matter how many graphs you have.
• 2:19
  No, the, the, the refrigeration industry will always be. You know, there'll be a big place for touching and feeling temperatures and air flows and things. And you, you know, one of the things you do learn pretty quick is you get a feel for when, when it feels right. Don't you? Whether the discharge is warm enough, whether the suction is cold enough, and that helps you out a ton at the start because.
• 2:20
  That puts you then in the direction you need to go and then all of that good technical information on the, on the PLC or on the controller helps you refine that. But, you know, you, it's, it's so easy to, to approach that in the opposite direction. Isn't it? Take yourself four times as long.
• 2:21
  And I think that's the big thing is, , teaching people in the industry to go and do that, to, to, to try stuff, you know, I think like when I started, I was nervous and trying stuff cause nobody taught me a lot of the stuff, right?
• 2:22
  So when I'm out on call and I'm just like stressed, should I open this? Should I close that? If you go out and try stuff, you make a mistake. You just be honest about it and go back to your manager or your lead and say, listen, I, I shut this valve and all of a sudden it shut all this stuff off and I don't know why, and ask the question, you know, and hopefully it didn't do too much damage, you know, like I burnt out boards, like I smashed compressors.
• 2:23
  I broke valves, you know, by making mistakes, but, uh, learning from those is, uh, you know, is the, the growing piece. And I think if we have more. You know, like you said, more people to support them out there, that's going to make a big difference. And that's why we do refrigeration mentor to help, help it out.
• 2:24
  And just like you do, you support all the team there to try to share that knowledge. And I think if everyone can learn a little bit and share that, that correct knowledge with someone else, it's going to make the industry grow a lot faster. I don't think there's a. There's enough of that, you know, cause we're just always putting out a fire.
• 2:25
  We're always on tight timelines. We have people on our backs about how come it's not done yet. And it puts a lot of pressure on us as professionals to, to get that job done on these complex systems.
• 2:26
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And systems are getting more complex. Um, you know, it's, it's inevitable with the likes of CO2 because it needs more complex systems to control it, you know?
• 2:27
  And I think, I think what you said is absolutely right. You know, and we, we shouldn't. If, if somebody makes a mistake, then so be it, you know, we might catch that through our remote link to a site, you know, or by talking to them, we might say, no, you don't want to do that, but we shouldn't put people in the position where they're afraid to try something in case they make a mistake because everyone makes mistakes, you know, there, there isn't a, one of us who hasn't inadvertently stopped a cabinet from working or shut a compressor off or worse, you know, shut a rack down it's, it happens, you know, you, you, you do have a certain element of that when you're in your learning.
• 2:28
  You know, so and afterwards, you know, and nobody never made a mistake. Is that
• 2:29
  so? But the thing is, I think it costs the industry a lot more if people don't try Because this is where two or three or four hour service calls come for a 30 to an hour hour service call They're just worried about trying, what should I do?
• 2:30
  And then they call after three or four hours, or they don't call at all and just go back the next day to try to figure it out again.
• 2:31
  Yes, we used to have, um, a culture when, when the first major transcritical adoption was going on in. In some of the supermarkets of when we have guys working shifts at the old company If it was getting like towards the end of the shift They'd go in and the rack isn't running properly and they'd switch it off and switch it on again And oh, it drives me mad when people do that because you lose everything that was faulted on it but of course The majority of the time that'll put it back in a position where there's enough of it running to get them through an hour Or two And then the next engineer gets the call the next day and he goes in there and you're then relying on him or her not to be the, the person who goes, I'll just switch it off and on again.
• 2:32
  Yeah. Um, but you've got to, you know, you've got to put enough knowledge into the guys, enough confidence that, yeah, okay. You say, yeah, it might be the, the temporite filter's gone. Okay, so just change it, you know, the worst that's going to happen is you're not going to change it, right? It's not going to work, but you've got there and it's already not working.
• 2:33
  So the worst that happens, it'll still be not working. Yeah. Yeah
• 2:34
  Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing I think we got to we got to build the confidence in a lot of the newer technicians as well as Training, it comes back to training too. It's like, once again, I see it time and time again that they're more put under the technicians that are put under here, go, go work on the CO2 system.
• 2:35
  You never worked on before. And it's like, uh, okay, where do I start? You know? So it's, I think it comes back to that. And I think it's still even refrigeration training, like even after you're in it for five, eight, 10 years. There's still something you're forgetting stuff along the way, you know what I mean?
• 2:36
  You got to go back and continue to learn and grow and I recommend going to lots of different Manufacture trainings going to take in you watch YouTube videos. Listen to podcasts. This is only gonna help you Kevin This has been super awesome. You know, I love chatting with you Well, we'll have to do this again We'll have to do this.
• 2:37
  Because there's so much knowledge that you have. Um, once again, like, um, follow Kevin on LinkedIn, we'll put his stuff in, in the show notes. He gives so much great information on there about CO2, always sharing your knowledge. That's what I really love that you're always just putting, putting in some knowledge, trying to share some tips.
• 2:38
  Um, if there could be one tip for a technician out there listening right now to really try to help them, they're starting to get into CO2. , what would that be?
• 2:39
  Don't view it as something completely alien. The, if you go to a CO2 call for a cabinet, not working, there is like a 90 percent chance it's going to be a fault you'd have seen before on a freon cabinet.
• 2:40
  Nothing after that rack before you get back to the rack again at the other end is going to be anything different to what you've seen before. Don't go in thinking it's going to be a CO2 major specific drama because 90 percent of the time it's something you've seen before just with the different stuff going around the system.
• 2:41
  Approach it like that. The, the 10, 5, whatever percent chance that it's a CO2 specific fault, speak to somebody. Who can give you some advice, but assume that it's going to be something regular because it almost always is. Yeah.
• 2:42
  I love that. And the big thing is, is that 90 percent of the calls are the drains.
• 2:43
  It's a frozen off cabinet. Banzer failed, probes gone, expansion valves blocked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the same stuff. It's so, I love that because that's the thing. A lot of people hear CO2 and their hearts start pumping and, and, and, and To be fair, they don't know. And there's a lot of fear put out there for people like, uh, high pressures and this and that.
• 2:44
  But if you take, I like that approach, take it as just a regular cabinet and you're 90%, you're going to figure it out. You know, I love that. I love that, Kevin. Uh, any final thoughts?
• 2:45
  Um, I think I'll just say, thank you very much for having me on Trevor. And I say, if you, uh, if you want to do this again, I'm more than happy.
• 2:46
  We could, uh, we could go industrial. Yeah, I love that. We should,
• 2:47
  we should, because I'm seeing more and more of that big chillers, big heat pumps with CO2, I love it. It's super exciting. Then we're seeing bigger compressors, bigger valves coming out and ejectors, all that cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Kevin, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us here at the Refrigeration Mentor Podcast, and we'll see you next time.
• 2:48
  Thanks Trevor.