Buildings Working
Refrigeration Supermarkets
Supermarkets are revamping their refrigeration systems, but are the trained engineers available to service them?
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Along with changes to legislation, political pressure
is also being brought to bear on the supermarkets, some of whom were already undertaking small-scale trials of alternatives to conventional refrigerants. However, the move was given increased impetus in February last year following the publication of the first Chilling Facts report, compiled by the campaigning group the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which is calling for all supermarkets to phase out HFCs by 2015. An updated Chilling Facts, published last month, reported that only two per cent of major supermarket retail stores in the UK have refrigeration systems that are HFC- free. Graeme Fox, head of contractor Specialist Mechanical
Services, and HVCA and British Refrigeration Association representative at the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration European Contractors’ Association, says that although he disagrees with much of the data used in the first Chilling Facts, politicians accepted it as fact and put pressure on the supermarkets to act. ‘I think a lot of supermarkets have acted not on the best advice, but on the need to be seen to be green because they could not be seen to do nothing,’ he says. Sainsbury’s CEO is not alone in expressing
concerns about the lack of engineers competent to work on CO2. M&S has launched an in-house CO2 training programme, while Andy Campbell, head of refrigeration at Tesco, is so concerned the store’s plans will be scuppered by a lack of competent personnel that he has instigated an initiative to create a cross-industry CO2 standard. Campbell chairs a committee made up of the British
Refrigeration Association, the Institute of Refrigeration and the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Board along with SummitSkills, the sector skills council for Building Services Engineering, and training body City & Guilds to develop a qualification to cover all CO2-
56
CIBSE Journal April 2010
If the supermarkets go large on
alternative refrigerants there will be skills, equipment and training issues to overcome – Cedric Sloan
based refrigeration systems. The new qualification is expected to be launched in the summer. A specification has been developed and is in the process of being approved. A similar qualification for hydrocarbon- based systems is set to follow. In addition to a shortage of trained engineers,
specifiers and contractors working on systems based on alternatives to HFC refrigerants are also constrained by a lack of equipment. ‘As soon as you get into specialist gases you do limit your choice of manufacturer and plant is more expensive because there is not much of it about so every machine is effectively bespoke,’ says Klima-Therm’s Mitchell. ‘There is a vested interest by some in the industry to keep things as they are because some of the big, global manufacturers are tied into HFCs because of the amount of research and development work they’ve done, but prices will come down as competition increases,’ he says. With the majority of natural refrigeration schemes yet
to commence, it is still early days for these pioneering green technologies. Currently the refrigeration industry appears to be responding to the challenges of designing, constructing and maintaining both CO2 and propane- based systems. However, if many of the supermarkets attempt to meet all of their commitments at once, then this situation will change rapidly. ‘If the supermarkets do decide to go large on alternative refrigerants such as CO2, then there will be skills, equipment and training issues to overcome,’ warns FETA’s Sloan. l
www.cibsejournal.com
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