There are many professional behaviors that must be improved within the air conditioning industry if the region is to be positioned as a strong competitor. The key would be training and updating.
by Camilo Botero*
Meditating on what topic to write in this column and with the syndrome of the blank page that is so distressing at times like this, I made a small account of what I have written: technical, ecological, administrative, academic, "botacorrientes" etc. and I thought: if I write more about it I think I will be repeating like the singers who make a good song and the others are variations around the same theme.
That is why it occurred to me to try to specify the issues that are priorities in our profession and guilds, to modernize and adapt to the times that run this discipline of air conditioning, and with this term I try to cover everything that implies achieving climatic conditions either through air conditioning in tropical climates, heating where the seasons make it necessary, ventilation where applicable and certain refrigeration applications such as food preservation at medium temperatures (the other refrigeration issues such as freezing and cold chain, no less important are the subject of other disciplines that are not my specialty).
At a global engineering conference of the firm Carrier, one of the exhibitors wondered with some sarcasm and disenchantment: Where is the Ipad of air conditioning? I mean by this that we have not made technical-scientific discoveries that really change the course of this business and then he remarked: "Everything we do has centuries or millennia of having been invented".
The above statement has made me meditate deeply on what we are doing and where we are going in our exercise, and in general the panorama that I can appreciate I do not like. We are going to solutions without design, to more split or package type equipment (which are excellent for individual solutions, but not for large installations), which are not the most efficient and many of them almost disposable in the short term.
It is true that we have advanced in more efficient compression systems, in control, in normalization, but in the fundamental that is the refrigeration cycle dates from the early nineteenth century and cycles such as absorption come from the eighteenth century. The fundamental psychometric chart in all HVAC calculations turned a century old last year.
That said, the challenge is to completely overturn our climate industry, which will obviously require a lot of effort and investment, especially in research.
I modestly believe that this could be done through the virtuous cycle that I have dealt with several times in this column:
Training
In previous columns I mentioned this topic; I tried to form the ICAIRE or the Colombian Institute of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration so that it had laboratories for teaching, certification and research in ACARIE, but it has not yet materialized.
I believe that from the FAIAR (Ibero-American Federation of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Associations) we have the obligation to modernize the teaching in our guild, from the level of technicians to the designer engineers, through the assembly, maintenance and sales engineers. I think it merits specializations and master's degrees as they exist in Europe, but from a perspective of the guilds and not purely academic but with the resources and experiences of the faculties of mechanical engineering or similar and the technical schools such as SENA in Colombia and SENAI in Brazil.
I think that in general the technological level has declined and we must take it to the state of the art that the circumstances demand.
Certification
At the same time, with a substantial improvement in the training and training of our engineers and technicians, certification must be given to ensure that they have achieved the skills and knowledge required to properly exercise the profession, but above all to be managers in the modernization of our profession. ASHRAE has certification programs in the most important disciplines of air conditioning, which you should incorporate or adapt to our Latin American environment.
Today, from what I see in my country and what I read from other countries there is a great indiscipline in this regard, there is no PE (Professional Engineer) exam or equivalent, many times you do not even have the professional registration and that is why as we say in Colombia, you end up doing the jobs "all dog and cat".
Standardization
At this point we are in diapers, standards are cited in the designs (especially those of ASHRAE and AHRI) but in reality they are at the discretion of suppliers, installers, maintenance personnel and end users. It is nothing but to analyze what has to do with the rational use of energy (which is conspicuous by its absence), the care of the environment and the conditions of comfort, ventilation and filtration. All this is because there are the rules, but there are no codes and / or regulations that give them strength and enforce them.
I think it is good what is being done internationally with certain standards such as standard 189.1 that is written in code language and will be mandatory in the United States; ISO 50001, which is advocating for much more effective Energy Management (management, science and technology) and aims to be universal in nature, which would make it easier to implement; the RITE (Regulation of Thermal Installations in Buildings) in Spain, which is mandatory.
From the latter we have made a version of the RITE for Colombia, which is in the period of submission for approval to the Ministries of Energy, Environment and Trade.
Also very important are the certification programs of buildings such as LEED and SAC (Colombian Environmental Seal - in the process of elaboration), since these certifications create a culture of the efficient use of energy and other resources such as water and soil.
*
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.
