Training for the Future w/ Clifton & ESCO

Clifton Beck of ESCO Group returns to the podcast to talk about training for the future. He also talks about how he became an educator, what it's like to be a trades educator with ESCO Group, and how educators can handle the recent HFC phasedown and the rise of A2L refrigerants.

Especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, mass media has changed the way the industry thinks about training. Organizations like ESCO have evolved, and that is evident in their curricula; changes are being made to keep up with field tools and equipment to make sure technicians are up to date. A large network of industry experts makes these training curricula possible.

Virtual and media education have changed the way we think of educators. Many of the most knowledgeable people in the industry, including people like Craig Migliaccio, work in the field and aren't traditional educators but have a large positive influence on the industry due to social media.

Refrigerant regulation changes, including the HFC phasedown, present opportunities for training to focus on combating misinformation and adapting to field conditions. Training should aim to eliminate confusion and anger in these situations. Proper installation and service procedures will make the A2L transition much easier.

Clifton and Bryan also discuss:

Clifton's professional history
HVAC experts and relationship building
ESCO Institute and HVAC Excellence
The evolution of educators and expectations for them
HFC phasedown facts
Recovery, recycling, and reclaiming refrigerant appropriately
Commercial vs. residential HVAC/R and refrigerant regulations
Educators as social media personalities
HVAC Excellence Conference

Learn more about ESCO Group's resources at https://www.escogroup.org/. You can also check out the ESCO Group YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@escogroup.

Learn more about the HVACR Training Symposium or buy a virtual ticket today at https://hvacrschool.com/symposium.

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Real training for HVAC ( Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration) Technicians. Including recorded tech training, interviews, diagnostics and general conversations about the trade.

In this short podcast episode, Bryan talks about the CPS Molecular Transformator and what it does.

The Molecular Transformator is a version of a tube-in-shell heat exchanger, which is a method of exchanging heat from one fluid medium to another fluid medium. Tubes containing a fluid pass through a shell containing water or glycol, and there is a heat exchange between that secondary fluid and the fluid being circulated in the tubes. In a Molecular Transformator, the fluid being circulated is recovered refrigerant, and the secondary fluid is water (in a bucket), which absorbs heat from the refrigerant and cools it down to make sure that the refrigerant enters the recovery tank as a liquid.

Refrigerant recovery machines have condensers inside of them, but they are quite small and don’t hold a lot of refrigerant by design; many recovery machines use microchannel coils. A lot of the time, the refrigerant leaving a recovery machine is a liquid-vapor mix and too high-temperature; a lot of people run a hose over the tank or put it in a bucket of ice. The “Molecular Transformator” tries to settle the vapor molecules down into a liquid; it transforms the vapor molecules using the same mechanism as a tube-in-shell heat exchanger.

The main issue is that there will be leftover refrigerant in the Molecular Transformator after recovery. However, you can mitigate this problem with ball valves and proper purging. Do so responsibly to avoid venting refrigerant.

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