Articles by Joanna R. Turpin

Emerson’s AHR booth showcased its solutions and award-winning products in the areas of human comfort, cold chain, professional tools, and building infrastructure. It also featured the company’s 2019 Innovation Award winning product in the Refrigeration category — the Copeland Scroll™ fractional-horsepower, low-temperature compressor.

With over 20 years of experience in natural refrigerants, Embraco’s compressor portfolio features products for commercial food service, food retail, merchandisers, and aftermarket segments. Conveniently, the booth was sectioned into these four different segments, so AHR Expo attendees could easily find the R-290 solution they were looking for.

Will Gresham, executive vice president, Dynatemp Intl., said the company plans to focus on its revamped reclamation program, partner wholesalers, and education this year.

This year, the company was particularly excited to talk about one of its more recent and significant product milestones, R-454B, which will be sold commercially by Chemours as Opteon™ XL41. The new replacement for R-410A was recently selected by Carrier for its residential and light commercial ducted a/c equipment.

In Aspen Refrigerant’s booth, the message to the industry was quite clear: R-22 is readily available and will be legal to use, buy, and sell for years to come.

At its booth this year, Arkema took the opportunity to promote R-32 as a transition refrigerant for the air conditioning market. Arkema’s global business director of fluorochemicals, Matthew Ritter, said that while the company does not necessarily believe that R-32 will be the final answer, it is a very good choice for that segment of the market.

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.

Buying new, higher-efficiency refrigeration equipment can be cost prohibitive, which is why making targeted retrofits or upgrades to existing systems may make the most sense for many food retailers.

California has now signaled that it, too, intends to follow Germany down the renewable energy path. In September, the governor signed a bill requiring that 100 percent of the state’s electricity be generated by renewable energy sources such as solar or wind by 2045. This is an expensive proposition and will significantly boost California’s already high residential electricity costs, which are currently about $.20/kWh.

On the residential side, contractors are concerned about keeping IoT-enabled thermostats safe from hackers, and on the commercial side, they want to ensure that building automation systems are as impenetrable as possible.