The training and certification of human resources are the keys to the vertiginous change that the air conditioning industry is experiencing today.
By Camilo Botero*
I darely venture to deal with this issue, which is still speculative, but due to the historical context in which we are, it is essential to address it by all of us who in one way or another are involved in the air conditioning business.
When I refer to this generic term I speak of all the fundamentals, processes, technologies, systems, equipment and applications that we use to achieve specific climates, whether for human comfort or for industrial processes, through air conditioning, heating, ventilation, dehumidification and wetting. I do not include in this article refrigeration, which although it is very important I am not aware of developments in this field.
My father was a merchant but he always had farms in the coffee zone of Colombia. Some of my memories are traveling on unpaved roads and arriving on horseback to a town located in the central mountain range, because you could not get there or by jeep and later, travel a good part of the country in steam trains.
I also remember that there was a breakthrough around that time: the possibility of traveling in the fabulous DC-3. This was in the late '40s.
For my great fortune I have seen great technological changes: the transistor, black and white television, 3D cinema, the incredible achievements of NASA, advances in electro medicine, the IBM 1130 where I elaborated my master's thesis with punched cards; aviation to modern Airbus and Boeing, cell phones, iPads, etc.
In the air conditioning I started with the course of the National University of Colombia at the end of the 60s and I still have the notebook of the time.
During the postgraduate course at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro I took two courses with the Hindu Professor Rabindra Taylor. From that time I also keep my class notes and a lot of psychrometric letters with solutions to projects; that was in 1971, and in 1980 at Carrier's Bynum Center Institute, I received a very comprehensive design course.
Dizzying changes
With this background and with the visit to a large number of factories, fairs and courses, I have been working so far working in the fields of maintenance, assembly, consulting and teaching. But now I feel that everything is changing vertiginously and for the better.
This is where I dare after this long preamble to speculate on the future of HVAC. To begin with, there are a wide variety of systems:
- Central cold water systems, condensation by air or water, with frequency inverters to control, pumps, fans, compressors.
- District cooling and heating systems
- Variable coolant VRF
- Floor distribution (underfloor air distribution UFAD)
- Chill beams
- Displacement ventilation
- Heat pumps
- Geothermal systems
- Trigeneration (CHCP combined heating cooling & power)
- Photovoltaic (PV) cooling
- Bioclimatic systems, etc.
Apart from that, control has burst into all projects. An air conditioning system is not conceived that cannot adapt to partial loads or to the variation of these loads, by means of automation. On the other hand, standardization and regulations are becoming increasingly demanding motivated by the environmental issue and the cost of energy.
All of the above leads us to conclude that we are doomed to a change in the way we approach design, assembly, operation and maintenance in a radically different way.
Training and reading
We must know in depth the fundamentals of thermodynamics, psychometry, heat transfer, fluid mechanics and mass transfer (wetting and wetting processes). And even when they are the subject of other disciplines we must understand the principles of control and electricity in the issues of power and maneuver.
It is essential to have a thorough understanding of the codes and standards in force; for example, AHSRAE 189.1. In Colombia we are developing the RITE (Regulation of Thermal Installations in Buildings, based on the Spanish RITE), and the SAC (Colombian Environmental Seal, through the Ministry of the Environment and ICONTEC).
Engineers and technicians working in HVAC must be competent and certified. In Latin America there are good universities that in their mechanical engineering pensum teach air conditioning. There are also good technological institutes for the practical level, but it suffers from updating and certification.
And here I want to quote Don Guillermo Carvajal when he says "the profession that I like the most is that of aviator, because there are no chambones. The one who is chamboneando is killing himself!"
Fortunately or unfortunately air conditioning doesn't kill anyone, at least not so dramatically. So to a good understanding few words are enough.
Nowadays buildings are getting smarter, more airtight, solar radiation more intense; climate change has produced increases in design temperatures in our cities, so we must interact more closely with architects and civil engineers as well as project owners, and define the owner's requirements for that specific project as recommended by ASHRAE's Commission in HVAC&R Guideline 1.1 . Quality Assurance in Air Conditioning.
Therefore, and to conclude, I dare to make the following proposals:
Training: Start a project to structure curricula that adequately prepare our engineers and technicians in all fundamentals, systems, equipment and applications; through ASHRAE manuals, AHRI books, the classics of Carrier, Trane, York and a beautiful text that I received from the firm Saeg called Engineer's HVAC Handbook by Price, edition 1.
The Spanish Association of Air Conditioning (Atecyr), also has a series of very updated books and are in Spanish for those who have difficulty with English (I apologize if I have some texts to cite).
Standardization: We must make a very great effort to have the fundamental rules and regulations in all Latin American countries, which are mandatory, regulating the exercise of the profession but without harming it.
Certification: It is essential to start an aggressive certification program from all perspectives, professional and technical, led by the air conditioning associations of each country. The law empowers us to do so since we are the ones who hold that specific knowledge. This process can be led by FAIAR, which is the Ibero-American Federation of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration.
Finally, we must feel very grateful for being in this historical moment, of such fabulous changes and that allows us and forces engineers and technicians to be protagonists of change.
* Camilo Botero is the current Secretary of the Federation of Ibero-American Associations of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration - FAIAR; he was president of ACAIRE and is president of Camilo Botero Ingenieros Consultores Ltda. He has worked as a teacher in several Colombian universities, guilds and currently in ACAIRE in diploma courses of air conditioning projects, energy efficiency in air conditioning and refrigeration, cogeneration and trigeneration, applied psychometrics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and turbomachinery.
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