Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 199. Learning and Embracing CO2 Refrigeration with Floyd Sparks

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Episode 199. Learning and Embracing CO2 Refrigeration with Floyd Sparks · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Fred: I'm tired of changing refrigerant. Let's go. CO2, let's go with it. I think the greatest thing that's come along in the past 25 years, it's really not complicated. You just got to respect it. Uh, CO2 is no different than the other ones. So refrigerant is the refrigerator. It's a sucking in a vessel that has high pressures on it.
• 0:01
  I don't care which one you with.
• 0:02
  Trevor: Welcome to the refrigeration mentor podcast. I'm your host Trevor Matthews as a former technician turned entrepreneur. My goal is to really help train you, educate you, and mentor you in the commercial refrigeration industry. Each week, I'm going to have top guests from technicians.
• 0:03
  The manufacturers to experts around the world to really help us grow and learn together by sharing their knowledge in commercial refrigeration, commercial HVAC. And not only on the technical side, but really the professional and the personal development side as well. I'm really excited that you're here.
• 0:04
  Now let's get a conversation going.
• 0:05
  So I'm down here in Georgia at a CO2 transcritical startup with Floyd Sparks, who is the owner of Performance Refrigeration. And we've been talking over the last few days about how to start up a transcritical system. Floyd's on his third one. And I want to get to know Floyd a little bit because he's been a contractor for decades now in the refrigeration industry, doing supermarket work, install.
• 0:06
  Service and I really want to find out a little bit about his journey Floyd. How you doing, brother? All right. How you doing? I'm doing so good. So Floyd, how did you
• 0:07
  Fred: get into refrigeration? I used to be with General Motors tech support telling people how to fix cars with General Motors Dealerships didn't like being inside didn't like being clean all the time So I wanted something new, so I quit that and started in this field as an installer.
• 0:08
  Then I went from there to startup guy, from there to service. And did you start your own business right away, or did you work for someone else when you started out? I worked for somebody else. I worked for Accel Refrigeration for about 12, 14 years, doing publicists, grocery stores. Worked on agriculture stuff, and I left Excel refrigeration and started this business.
• 0:09
  Awesome. Well, congratulations on you.
• 0:10
  Trevor: Uh, that's not an easy task, you know what I mean? Starting your own business. Because I know lots of people start and, uh, most businesses that start up don't make it after five to, the average is five to six years. But you've been in business for how long now? Twenty two.
• 0:11
  Twenty two years, and I know starting on a business is not easy because I started mine three years ago, and it's, there's a lot of risk you took involved. What made you do that job?
• 0:12
  Fred: I wanted to, I had two, my sons were five and seven, and the people I worked for, I was always gone working for them, and I wanted to be a dad more than I wanted their money.
• 0:13
  Yeah, so I started my own company and for a long time I picked and choose and spent a lot of time with my kids. Oh good. And they both work for me now. Married and got their own kids and they're part of this business. They both have, uh, college education degrees. Engineering, one of them. Awesome. And went to school, HVA school, cause there's not really a school for this.
• 0:14
  The other one is um, IT and cyber security degree. Awesome, that's great.
• 0:15
  Trevor: So over the years, you've been in the industry for a long time. It has changed. You know, you probably started when it was R12, 512 systems. Then you get into R22, 404, 448. Now we're on the CO2. These are regulations that are coming into place for supermarket customers.
• 0:16
  And you're starting to see in the agricultural business, this is an agricultural plant that we're at. And you have installed that you and, uh, your organization have installed. This is your third third. So within the last three, I know you would have learned a huge amount. It's a big learning curve, learning CO2.
• 0:17
  What are some of the things from your first install to now your third install, some of the things that you've learned? So I've learned,
• 0:18
  Fred: you know, you got to use bigger pot, K tot. Yeah. You got, it's a different size, your gas cooler lines, which is your condenser, have to be scheduled 80, either stainless steel or XHV or carbon steel.
• 0:19
  Uh, I like the stainless, because you don't got to constantly paint it, so, I, I process in stainless steel, because of that. Uh, It's less maintenance. Biggest thing is your welds are different, you got to, your welders have really got to step up. Yeah. Uh, the installation is thicker. Pretty much piping is the same as your synthetics, but there is a little bit of curve, learning curve on the piping.
• 0:20
  Oh, for sure. Uh, especially line sizes. I ain't got far enough along, but I want to size my own line sizes like I did before. So I pay an engineer, try to draw it out, give him the measurements, how I'm going to run it, and let them size them for me. That way, cause I don't. Wanna be wrong there?
• 0:21
  Trevor: Well, the big thing is, it's new, right?
• 0:22
  And you wanna, you wanna make sure that, you wanna get a few under your belt, get a good understanding, because it is a bit different, right? It is. The design's a bit different, we do have higher pressures, you got different pipes, like you said. Stainless steel, you could have the high pressure copper, well just like you mentioned, so that is a learning curve to someone who has never worked on CO2 before you got, and pressure relief.
• 0:23
  So can you talk a little bit about that from your first one? We've been here for all week. I haven't, I haven't seen a pressure relief go up yet on this startup, which is great. But I know what happens at startup, especially when you're starting to learn. You want to talk about the safeties that you see on the systems that you worked on.
• 0:24
  Fred: Well, all your pressure release valves, except for what's on your compressors, are piped outside the machine room. So you're, uh, You gotta pop them outside in case they do cut loose. Um, CO2, they have two different types. They have a safety and a regular pressure. If regular pressure cuts loose, you don't reset.
• 0:25
  The other ones, we call them burpers, cause when they're cutting loose, relieving pressure, that's what they sound like. They sound like they burpin Yep. But they'll reset. When the pressure, where they're at. Yeah, but again, you try to pop everything out the machine room pressure relief valve just for safety because it is a carbon dioxide, so you don't want to be breathing it, but you don't want to breathe no refrigerants period, even synthetics.
• 0:26
  Exactly. So, um, that's the biggest thing with them. I have not had one cut loose with me yet. I had synthetic types cut loose with me, but I have not had a CO2 yet. So I don't, Uh, and hope I never do.
• 0:27
  Trevor: Probably won't. There's a lot of safeties in it. I've seen a lot of the work that you and your team and your sons have done.
• 0:28
  And it's really, really good job. I was looking into the walk in box and this is an onion farm, which was really cool. These are really big boxes. And then I've seen you have your coils on the side, pushing the cold air in. And then you got these big fans at the back, pushing the cold air forward. Do you want to talk a little bit about that design that you built there?
• 0:29
  For this, uh, agricultural firm.
• 0:30
  Fred: So we call them pressure walls. You're, you got a square box. The back of the room is our pressure fans. Which is 7, 000 CFM per fan, six times. Well, um, we have a two and a half foot back return air wall. And then the evaporators are on the left and right hand side of the room.
• 0:31
  So when we stack these onion bins, micro bins, or uh, aspen bins, uh, that are designed for this. Uh, slated and everything with air holes to move product. You're stacking 22 bushel bins, 8 high, 10 across, 11 deep. So it's a big Rubik's Cube. It's really big. So, it's uh, 300, 000 pounds of onions and one per room on this facility.
• 0:32
  So when you do that, when you're building the bins, stacking the bins, they're actually directing the air for you. So they come, pressure wall fans, push it out, catches the cold air that the evaporators are pushing out, discharge air, take it to the front of the room, push it down the front wall, and then since we've sealed the bins up against the back wall, it makes it The pressure wall fans pull it back through the product and it's just a fixed circulation at that time.
• 0:33
  Trevor: And that's really important for this design because it's going to take, uh, the first they dry out the onions, is that correct? So you say, uh, they have, uh, machines that go out with chains that pull the onions out of the ground. Then they lay them on the ground and then they dry out and then, uh, you dry them out.
• 0:34
  But then you put them into these coolers because you got to cool them down. But not only you got to cool them, you have to have the humidity. Uh, or you have to dry them out as well.
• 0:35
  Fred: Yes, we have to bring, when we load the room there at 95 percent humidity, uh, 85 temp, we're gonna, based on a 6 8 day pull down time, as we're coming down from 85 90 degrees to set point, which is 34 degrees, by the time we normally get in the 38 37 degree, We're normally around 78, 80 percent humidity.
• 0:36
  And then when we're at 34, it's somewhere around 77. So then we have to bring the humidity down to, uh, 70%. So we have reheat to make the unit run to bring the humidity on down and not bring the temp on down at the same time.
• 0:37
  Trevor: Yeah. So, so there is a science behind it. Yes. It's not like you just throw in some, some, uh, coils and you throw in some heaters, there's a science and strategy behind how to.
• 0:38
  Really, uh, get them the product to where it needs to be before it's shipped out to the distribution centers.
• 0:39
  Fred: Right. Long time ago, and for about eight of sweet onions were let's say 1983. Um, they actually started around 76, 1976. You'd be, we're growing 10 acres of them. There wasn't storm. They sold real fast.
• 0:40
  Uh, then it got bigger and bigger and bigger over the years, about 1988. Everybody's. Planting a bunch of, a bunch of acreage. Uh, so we started building these rooms. At first it was just a cooler. We figured out that they molded. So then we figured out what it was with the University of Georgia. And so we come up with these designed equipment with reheat, dehumidify, and it got bigger and bigger.
• 0:41
  The programs are the very most important part. Frigeration and the humidity is Part of it, but the program for these rooms and the controller is pretty elaborate on how it does it, like we try to do energy management. So we start out at 85 degrees. Well, from 85 to 55, we don't really need defrost because we're not icing the coal yet.
• 0:42
  So when you hit 55, you start seeing ice. So we have a program that we don't bring defrost heaters on. Until around 55 and then that's once every 12 hours, she's going to defrost as she comes down, the more we implement defrost.
• 0:43
  Trevor: Yeah, I see. Super cool. So it's not just throw it in, there's a strategy behind all of it.
• 0:44
  And so now this is the first one you've done with transcritical CO2 medium temp. What are some of the things you're looking forward, because CO2 is a faster pull down time than HFC, better heat transfer. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to learn, because this, that you're gonna learn in this first project to your next product, your next product.
• 0:45
  What are some of the things that you're excited about to see? Um,
• 0:46
  Fred: I'm, it's the real side, it goes, any rule, any product, the faster you get out the heat and get it down to temp, the longer the shelf life. Yeah, that's with any product. Yep. So. CO2 is new. There's some unknowns to it. Yeah, for sure. And this particular program that we're starting out with, we're putting more flexibility in adjustments.
• 0:47
  So, and we're going to be monitoring, graphing everything on a daily basis. Seeing what it's doing, going in the room, pulling the product out, looking at product for three months. The whole process until the room is empty. Okay. So we can see what the end result, what the product coming out like. So there's going to be three months of data getting, playing with programs to try to dial it in to get what we want.
• 0:48
  Cause there is some uncertainties. Can we do it? Yes, I believe we can. We just need a little bit more. The programs are going to change because of the way CO2 reacts. Uh, so we got some flexibility in this program that we've written to Be able to adjust more than the other programs that we've had before in synthetics to help us dial it in.
• 0:49
  Like I said, there's going to be a lot of, we come in the room at least every three days, pull some of the product out, look at it, see what she's doing, document it, take pictures of the product, internal probe of the onions. There's gonna be a lot of and
• 0:50
  Trevor: get data and this is the fine tuning of it because this is the First ones and this is what you do on any system, you know, you gotta fine tune the system To, to get it up and running properly and take some time, especially on new projects from, from this.
• 0:51
  Hey, I want to take a minute to talk about the upcoming refrigeration mentor learning programs. Every couple of months, we continue to roll out live instructor led sessions by subject matter experts on compressors, supermarket refrigeration, and CO2 refrigeration. We're really here to help you grow. Get to that next level.
• 0:52
  Head to the Refrigeration Mentor web page, refrigerationmentor. com. Check out the events page. There's a compressor masterclass, there's a supermarket refrigeration program, and there's a CO2 program. There's also free trainings, free workshops. Really, check them out. See if this interests you. Read a little bit about it, because we're really here to help you.
• 0:53
  These live sessions are for you to come and ask questions, to learn a little bit, to grow. We've trained thousands of technicians from technicians from three to four to five years in industry, all the way up from 20 to 30 years in industry, either get them to the next level or get them back on track.
• 0:54
  What do you expect going forward or what do you think is going to happen going forward? Are you going to see more CO2 coming to your business, working with more of your customers? And recommending CO2 or how do you think that's going to play out over the next five to ten years with your business? Do you think you're going to see more CO2 or?
• 0:55
  Fred: Uh, yes. From what I've seen with CO2, even in, I've done grocery stores with it. This is the first agriculture, uh, Vidalia sweet onion facility that's been done with it. I like the CO2. I like the way it reacts. I like the way it runs. Once you start understanding it, it's really not a complicated system. The biggest thing on it is the pressure and what kind of refrigerator it is.
• 0:56
  But I've been dealing with CO2 for 40 years. It's used for a lot of applications. Uh, we used to gas the rooms and bring them up to 5 percent CO2 and 3 percent oxygen back in the 90s. They didn't come out with ozones.
• 0:57
  Trevor: So people think CO2 is new, but it came out hundreds of years ago. People have been using CO2 for refrigeration.
• 0:58
  It just had high pressures back in the early 1900s where they, they started to use and they came out with a Freon and a synthetic HFC, but it's not nothing new, right? So. Now you're on your third one. I can tell you guys are already pretty confident and learning. And as you continue to learn and your team is working safe around it, making sure they think before they act, because it's new to them, where I've seen a lot of times in the HFC where all there's synthetic, where a lot of people get complacent, you know what I mean?
• 0:59
  And it happens. You just been doing it as repetitive. Yeah, you know, I always seen even with me when I was in the field, the safety aspect, I kind of, you know, I lost it a little bit, you know what I mean? I was like, I can do this and that, but with the CO2, even your team, I seen working safe thinking before acting.
• 1:00
  And I think that's really helpful. Hopefully for the industry, a lot of people that you make, you know, before you make a decision, think about the valves you're opening and closing. Think about how you're charging, where you're charging. What was, what I was really impressed about when I first got to, to this facility is that.
• 1:01
  You guys pulled the system down to a, uh, 45 micron evacuation I seen, and I think it'll get even down lower. I think we, I seen at one point it get down to 12 microns. It did. You know what I mean? That's how you're gonna have a really good running system when you know, and this, there's hundreds and hundreds of feet of pipe in here.
• 1:02
  And we're talking about 3 inch, 4 inch. Six inch pipes go through this facility and you got it down that deep. You want to talk about some of the practices that you use to make sure that the system gets moisture out and it's a quality install.
• 1:03
  Fred: Yes, so when we were putting it in, one of the evaporators that we cut open, and this is a key rule that I place on my guys, installers especially, is when you, every single time Evaporator, rack, whatever you want to call it, system, should come in with pressure on it.
• 1:04
  So when you cut it loose, if you don't see how pressure here, I want to know about it. I want it labeled, I want it marked. Yeah, that's a great idea. One of the ones here, we didn't have that on this particular site. But what we did have was when we cut one of the suction lines over, water ran out of it. A lot of hose.
• 1:05
  Immediately, we sealed it back up, we hooked a vacuum pump on it, now it pulled, we did it every day, broke it with nitrogen, pulled it again, let her sit, we did that for three weeks straight until we got that micrometer on it, down on that particular evaporator. Awesome, yeah, so smart. So I didn't want it since we found it and note about it.
• 1:06
  Now, if I didn't know about it, of course I get, I wouldn't have done that because I didn't know. So until that one evaporator read right with a micrometer passed its test. Now the rest did not have that. That was the only one. Yeah. Why? I don't know. Didn't matter at the point. We are gonna address the problem.
• 1:07
  Yeah, exactly. On that particular one. We pressurized this system up to 500, a little over 500 psi. She held for 48 hours without losing. Awesome. So then we started the pumps, putting them on the pumps. We broke it every day for seven days straight. Uh, the sixth one, we put the filters in, pulled it back down, and um, she got down, we did do a test for two hours, we shut the pump off, with it valved off.
• 1:08
  Our macrons only rose 16 macrons in two hours. It's a good, that's a
• 1:09
  Trevor: great poll. And that's, that's, that's like the key thing in refrigerating, any refrigeration system. And I've seen so many, and I didn't, when I first started out, I wasn't doing it right at all. But I see now, now more knowledge is getting out there, more people are doing it right.
• 1:10
  And just like that, if you, uh, you start the system off right, just like that, that's number one thing. You're going to have a long running system. It's going to run for a long time. Because a lot of the systems that I've done, a lot of compressor teardowns in my day, and a lot of them are failed due to moisture in the system.
• 1:11
  And I know for sure this system's not going to have any
• 1:12
  Fred: issue with that at this point. Well, the one that we did have a problem, my main concern was if I just tied it in and pulled it, I could take a chance of pulling the water through all the piping. Yeah. That's harder. So I addressed the one evaporator, At that time, we went and popped the rest, started popping, moved off of it, went and started popping the rest of the facility in, and did that, and then we came back to it.
• 1:13
  Once she's passed, the Micron check telling me, okay, I think I'm good, I don't have no more, I don't have moisture in it. Yeah. And then we popped her in. So, Your installers are your key part. The install is the most important part of the system operation, period. It's lifespan, how it's going to do, are you going to have problems out of it.
• 1:14
  I tell everybody, I say, look, it don't need help to have problems. It'll do it by itself. So don't help it. Let's, let's do it right. And we'll have a good system, a customer for life, because I, I, I get, I've been to them. Nightmare facilities that are just having problem and problem a lot of times what I see is the way it was installed Hopping not sized correctly, you know poor workmanship.
• 1:15
  Um, i'm more into quality Yeah, but I really My I hand pick my welders till you prove to me. You can well not visibly see it. You're not welding I'll let you practice over here on scrap pieces of copper. Yeah, till you get good at it. Yeah Then I'll put you out here and I'll give you more money. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:16
  I don't know the way it goes, right. And
• 1:17
  Trevor: you bring value, you know, the people who work for you bring value and then they get value out of it. And it takes work though. Refrigeration is not easy. You've been doing it for 20, 30 years. And you know what I mean? Running your business. It's not an easy task. If you work hard at it, you can have a successful business just like yourself and have a successful career.
• 1:18
  What are one or two tips you would give like a up and comer in the refrigeration industry who's just starting out maybe in supermarket or starting to learn about the trade a couple years in? What are a couple tips you could give them to help
• 1:19
  Fred: them out? It's a feast or five and you're gonna have great times.
• 1:20
  You're gonna hit a low spot. You're like wondering how you're going to make payroll. Sometimes, uh, hang her down when it's good, make your company better. Spend money when it's slow, don't spend money. It's always what they call feast or famine. But the biggest thing, if you want it to grow, go with quality workmanship and stick with it.
• 1:21
  Sometimes you're not going to make as much money on a bid job to give a customer quality. Yep. So you, you didn't clear 60, 000 this time. You only cleared 25, 000. I've had the mentality since I started this thing, I don't care if I make 1, as long as I don't lose 50 cents, try to keep that mentality. You might, like I said, you're not going to make the same on every job.
• 1:22
  As you got good ones, you got bad ones, but still stick with the work. Uh, quality workmanship. Yeah, I think that's that will take you further than advertisement. Yeah, or anything else.
• 1:23
  Trevor: No, I totally believe that So you bring a huge amount of value to your customer you show them they're going to keep coming back Just like your customers, right?
• 1:24
  Fred: Yes,
• 1:25
  Trevor: and when you can bring that quality work, you can bring that value You can do the job confidently and it can stay running for years and years on end I think that brings a huge amount of value to the customers Well, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to chat with me today, and I really appreciate it.
• 1:26
  Fred: Yeah, you're welcome, man. It's been a pleasure working with you this week, Don. Yeah, so I enjoyed it. I watched your pro, uh, your podcast. I had seen you before and watched some of it. You, you, I even tell some of my guys, I said, look, it's people, you know, watch these things. It's, it's a learning. It helps you Uh, understand it.
• 1:27
  Yeah, especially like y'all do. Y'all, you explain it pretty detailed, uh, what stuff is doing, how it's working, and it helps guys out here in the field because there's not a lot of people doing this, uh, and you get your own time getting new people trying to train them and anywhere you can help them advance is a great thing, which is what you do.
• 1:28
  So, uh, Uh, great job on what you do. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Well, that's
• 1:29
  Trevor: the thing. It's a, it's a, it's a huge, um, commitment, I think for everyone in the industry, because working with contractors just like you, manufacturers and schools, I think we all have to do our job and our part, because I see how you talk with your, your team and your guys, you're, you're looking to help them advance.
• 1:30
  You're talking about, and I seen that over the last week, where you're working with them to help them perform better, help them be better at their roles. So. I really appreciate you, you know, showing me the values that you have with your team and helping them out, so.
• 1:31
  Fred: Yeah, man. Well, I, I enjoy, still enjoy.
• 1:32
  One thing about refrigeration, if you like challenge. You always like learning. Yeah, you're never gonna stop learning and this field is always challenging and you're always being educated
• 1:33
  Trevor: That's huge, right? Because even now you've been doing it for years We you told me you've learned a bunch of things already just over this job, you know versus your last job and this is what's great about refrigeration and I keep talking about with younger people or even people that have been in there for a Few years is like There's so much great opportunity in this industry, from controls, to electrical, to piping, to install, to service, and there's a challenge to it.
• 1:34
  It's not like it's the same thing every day. You don't get bored. Some things can get bored when you have to go wash out cases every day, you know? That's part of it. You know what I mean? But you fix and figure the problem out, and hopefully you can talk with the customer to solve that problem, you know, because it's not always easy.
• 1:35
  No, not always a problem from the, from the technician side, but the challenge there really helped me stay in the game. And that's why I keep doing it. Cause every day I'm learning something new.
• 1:36
  Fred: Yes. It is a learning field that you will never quit learning. It's always changing in my lifetime. And it is definitely been changing because we've been changing refrigerants.
• 1:37
  And that's one thing I like about CO2. If we're. Okay, I'm tired of changing refrigerant. Let's go. CO2, let's go with it. I think the greatest thing that's come along in the past 25 years, especially, Alright, first party people say that. It's really not complicated. You gotta respect it. Which is with anything that we do in this field, any refrigerants, I don't care.
• 1:38
  Yeah. 12 miles away, you have to respect it, cause it can all Driving down the road can get you hurt. Yeah, exactly. You just got to respect it. Be careful around any of it. Yep. Uh, CO2 is no different than the other ones where it's always. It's a refrigerant. It's a refrigerant. It's a sucking. And a vessel that has high pressures on it, I don't care which
• 1:39
  Trevor: one you hit.
• 1:40
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the big thing is, as you just said it there a minute ago, is that a lot of end users are tired of switching. You've seen all the same. You went from probably R 12, switched into R 22, then R 22 to 404, 404 to 405. And customers and end users just like, man, it just costs so much money.
• 1:41
  You may get new, new equipment. You got to replace stuff. Lots of people say there's drop ins. I never really ever seen a drop in, especially on a rack. You got to go set TX valves. You got to change filter, change oils. You know what I mean? So there's no, to me, there's no such thing as a drop in refrigerant.
• 1:42
  Lots of people say there's drop ins, but you can't just drop something in and walk away. You know what I
• 1:43
  Fred: mean? There's a replacement, but I haven't never, I said, um, let's say R22, you know, um, 407A is supposed to be a, it's a replacement refrigerator. Well, if you reclaim the 22 owl, and I call it a retrofit, to 407A, your valves take the same valves, even though then, when you do that retrofit, you're going to have to readjust your superheat because it's not going to run the same.
• 1:44
  Yep. You got to readjust your racks, and you got to do everything. But we've been changing so rapidly, especially in the past. Fifteen years, you know.
• 1:45
  Trevor: Well, I'm looking at one of your trucks right now, and there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different colors. Yes. Refrigerant cylinders in the back of one of your, your team's trucks, because that's what you could, when you're doing a service call, you would come up against.
• 1:46
  Fred: Yes. And with what we do, it takes more refrigerants. I don't, you can't carry it on the truck, but I do try to keep it close by, so if we need more than what's on the truck. We can go service it, but that's what I'm talking about. There's so many, I have to carry so many different refrigerators over the years.
• 1:47
  People have the retrofit from 22 to 407, M099, all the refrigerants, 507, 404, so many different ones. Now we got to carry so many that, Hey, I'm, let's, let's, let's quit that. It's expensive on contractor. Yeah. Expensive on the end user as well. Right? Yes. Customers don't like it when you send them the bill for what you had to put in it.
• 1:48
  Well, it won't run without it.
• 1:49
  Trevor: So, and that's one thing about CO2. I've heard from a lot of contractors, like they show them a bill of a hundred pounds of this, these new refrigerants, four, four, eight, four, four, nine, versus a bill of CO2 of a hundred pounds is a night and day
• 1:50
  Fred: differences. Yes, it is. And like I said, as far as refrigerants, what we've been given the way, right.
• 1:51
  448, the latest that came out that's also going away, is the newest, was the newest. It's reaction, the way it responds, the way it works, the way equipment runs with it, the glide on it. CO2 man, it's the best thing that's come out here to me since 502. Not that it's better, it's better than 502. 502 Had a good glide.
• 1:52
  Um,
• 1:53
  Trevor: Well, I know I know a lot of people said they loved R12 which because it was, you know, easy to work with. It was. It was super easy. You didn't have to worry about like, people told me, super clean systems. You could, you know what I mean, like you need with POE oil and stuff like that. And it was just a refrigerant easy to work with.
• 1:54
  But once again, there was decades of decades of learning about R12, because people don't remember back when I talked to a lot of people, you know, R12 came out in the 30s or 40s, I think. But there was decades and decades of learning on how to use that refrigerant until it was gone in the 87 or whatever when they Had the montreal protocol now co2 is really only in the game for last 10 years Maybe you know what I mean and only getting bigger in the last couple years here in north america is bigger in europe So I know for sure in the next 10, 15, 20 years with the advancement and working with CO2 more prices are going to come down.
• 1:55
  Designs are going to get better. Yes. Technicians are going to understand how to use it because when you go to schools and stuff, at some point you're going to be learning about that, that stuff. And as the older equipment gets out and replaced, we're going to have more confident tech, competent technicians out there.
• 1:56
  Fred: Yes. And like I said, It's new. Not a lot of people are doing it. Uh, some people might get out of it. I'm all for it. My sons, which work for me, they like it. I like it because I've had the experience. Uh, the only thing they don't got is I got 35, 30 something years, 35, 36 years experience in it. You know, they went with me as kids and helped me work on it.
• 1:57
  And then they went to college, you know, and they're, since they graduated college and got their own family, they're really getting into and they learn every day. But that's what you got to have is experience. You need experienced guys like me teaching younger generation how to do this or you're not going to have no body and you're not going to have no food because refrigeration.
• 1:58
  Trevor: If
• 1:59
  Fred: it wasn't for that, you couldn't feed the world,
• 2:00
  Trevor: because you can't make it cold. I keep telling people this, the world wouldn't be the way it is. Refrigeration is the most important job, or most important skill in the world. Like doctors need it, you know, if you're in a hospital room. We need it for food preservation, we need it for data centers, for communication.
• 2:01
  Refrigeration is everywhere and people just don't care. Don't think about it like that. Bloodbanks, bloodbanks. Yeah. I mean, it's, it does. It is everything. Floyd. Once again, I want to thank you for taking the time to chat with me on the refrigeration mentor podcast and look forward to speaking with you
• 2:02
  Fred: again.
• 2:03
  I hope we run up on each other again and speak down the road. I'll definitely be calling you Marty. Won't you go teach a class for me? Awesome.
• 2:04
  Trevor: I want to thank you so much for hanging out with me and the refrigeration mentor podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment. Let me know what were your key highlights.
• 2:05
  What you took away from myself, from my guest, as well as if you have not subscribed yet, head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and subscribe. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Let your friends know that there are people who care, who want to share the refrigeration information to help them get to the next level in their career.
• 2:06
  If you have not been to the refrigeration mentor website@refrigerationmentor.com, go check it out. There's a ton more guest podcasts I've been on as well as the event page. Check out the events page because there's a lot more free trainings as well as paid training to really help you grow your knowledge base.
• 2:07
  Super excited. Can't wait to see it. The next refrigeration enter podcast, let's get a conversation going.