ATLANTA — For A-Gas, coming to the AHR Expo means connecting with current and potential partners, getting a feel for the industry’s coming year, and educating the marketplace about the Total Solutions it can provide, said Taylor Ferranti, the company’s vice president of refrigerants.

A-Gas is dedicated to the lifecycle management of refrigerants and specialty gases, which includes new refrigerant sales; on-site refrigerant recovery; reclamation and separation; Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) testing and analysis; buyback; and destruction.

The booth had a Rapid Recovery team on-site to demonstrate its refrigerant recovery abilities, which can be used in the HVAC, refrigeration, demolition, and marine industries. Projects range in size from single residential split systems to chilling systems operating on tens of thousands of pounds to projects with thousands of units.

“Not only is this a solution for refrigerant recovery globally, but the product that is recovered is then brought back to our facilities, where it is then returned to AHRI-700 specifications and sold to our wholesale distribution partners, thus securing their source of supply,” said Ferranti.

A-Gas’s marketing communications manager, Jaclyn Schilkey, explained that the Rapid Recovery system recovers refrigerant quickly, allowing contractors to get to the next job faster. She said that the speed of A-Gas’s gas-powered machines means refrigerant recovery can be done on-site in a fraction of the time compared to standard, off-the-shelf equipment.

R-22 was another hot topic in the A-Gas booth. Schilkey noted that many contractors believe the refrigerant is going to be illegal and hard to obtain, but in fact, R-22 is legal, available, and will have a long service tail.

“With 2019 being the final year of HCFC allocations, we expect a lot of attention to be around our separation, recovery, and reclamation capabilities that will provide R-22 into the market for many years to come,” said Ferranti.

That being said, contractors need to ensure that they are not mixing refrigerants during the recovery process.

“We are seeing more and more mixed refrigerants coming back through reclamation efforts,” said Ferranti. “For much of the industry, this is viewed as a challenge, due to the lack of separation capabilities. We see this as an opportunity, because A-Gas has the world’s leading technology and capacity for mixed gas separation. Our separation technology allows us to bring these mixed gases back to AHRI-700 specifications and then sell them back into the market.”

The last few years in the refrigerant industry have been very busy, and this year will be no different for A-Gas, which will be launching its services in Canada in 2019. Schilkey said that the company has tripled in size over the last two years, with 55 locations throughout the U.S., and it will spend this year working on efficiencies.

Publication date: 2/18/2019

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