Transcript for:
Esco EPA Prep Week - Core Section

[Music] okay well good morning everybody thank you for joining um lock and learn a u training opportunity brought to you by John Stone supply so our Esco EPA prep week is part of our Co 19 relief project and so we've been doing this now for quite a few weeks and we're going to continue at least through the the the month of May and we're going to focus the entire week this week on our EPA prep and we have a lot of material to go over so we're just going to jump right into it and we're going to start on core today so we're going to focus today and tomorrow on core and um I said if you have any questions just give me a call or give me an email and we can regroup on it later because I probably won't be able to do any during the actual presentation I'm going bring my cameras down so I got a good clean view of everything so what the um what the Esco Institute does is they work hand inand with EPA to develop a um you an appropriate training module for being prepared for your EPA license and you know this is built by Esco and this is owned by Esco it's just being presented by Johnstone Supply and I've been talking extensively with Esco for the last couple of weeks and uh they're very excited that we're offering this onetime free opportunity for you guys we normally do these Esco classes once a month at each of our uh Johnstone Grimmy Group locations and um you know with the situation that we have we're just not able to do that so we're uh we're just going to be spending time with you and prepping you for your EPA so if you have not taken your EPA before or if you just have a type one or type two and you're wanting to um to upgrade to a universal or even if you just want to stay up to date on the current EPA regulations this is what you want to do because uh EPA states that it is the um the responsibility of the technician to stay up toate on the most current rate regulations so it will be your responsibility to stay updated with what is changing in our industry and we've had a lot change in our industry so this manual is intended to prepare technicians for the Environmental Protection Agency the EPA section 608 uh certification examination and contains the information required to successfully complete the exam we are not saying that if you know all this this information you're going to get a universal EPA you know we're just going to give you the majority of the material that you need to know but it will be your responsibility to Prep properly for your test all right so let's hop into what we're talking about so uh the book serves as a guide for reviewing all the materials U but it is not U if you notice what they're saying it is not a formal Refrigeration training course so we're just covering the refrigeration fundamentals but it is just a uh a tool for getting the training that you will need uh technicians preparing for this exam should be familiar with the basic Vapor compression refrigeration cycle as well as common service principles which we've covered a lot of this on our lock and learn Series so um if you have any questions on a lot of these topics you can go back and review some of the classes that we've already had and we can at least give you some additional instruction on that never a substitute for formal training though so the manuals been developed with the most current information that is in our industry and what is available for publication should EPA regulations change it is the responsibility of the technician to comply with these changes so you have to um continue your education uh section 608 of the Clean Air Act requires all persons who maintain service repair or dispose of appliances containing regulated refrigerants to be certified in proper refrigerant handling techniques as required by the national Recycling and Emissions Reduction Program and that's really what we're talking the most on is how to appropriately remove refrigerants out of a system so regulated refrigerants currently include chlorofluorocarbons hydrochlorofluorocarbons hydrocarbons and hydrofor olant anything that falls outside of that is going to have different regulations but we will talk about some of those and so you have an understanding of what those regulations look like um if you maintain service repair dispose of appliance containing a regulated refrigerant you must be certified and this is one of the big misconceptions in our industry if you are an apprentice working with a technician in the field you cannot legally work under another person's certification the the only time that that falls into a consideration is if you are in a classroom receiving instructor education you can follow instructions from your instructor but if you're in the field servicing equipment you must be certified you cannot work under somebody else's license so it's your responsibility to get certified uh in addition to the prep manual the practice questions are available to help prepare you for the EPA 608 which I we talked about and you can go on that link or you can go straight to www. escogroup.org practice and that will get you into those practice tests if your exam was administered through an Esco approved testing location you'll be able to log in to your Esco website so when you do register for that test you'll actually log in and create your own profile so you can um you know go in and out of that training U freely you can also contact eso's customer service team uh here's information for them if you have any questions um if you participate in exam that is administered in paper which we will not be doing uh you please allow 5 to seven business days that's the test we typically do here at Johnstone but you'll be actually doing a live um proctored video proctored test when you take this so as an overview um the core covers all your fundamental information of the Clean Air Act and it's required for any one of the four levels of certification so failure to pass the core means you're not going to pass any of the others and I've actually had people uh spend all their time you prepping for type two and type three and actually uh achieve above 70% which is passing for that layer but not pass core if you don't pass core you don't get anything so make sure you're well prepared for all four sections core one two and three um if we're looking at what we're going to cover today and tomorrow we're going to uh run through all of these we're going to talk about stratospheric ozone depletion quite a bit uh global warming potential we're going to go through different do and bubble points we're going to talk about the different pressure systems you know low medium high pressure and very high pressure we're going to go through all of our recovery recycling um and reclaim techniques and um we'll spend quite a bit of time on each one of these so if we talk about what each section is so you have an understanding of what type one type two and type three is uh type one will be considered um persons who maintain service repair or dispose of small appliances they must be certified as type one technicians a small appliance is devis there is um defined as a pre-built assembly with a factory charge of five pounds or less that's a lot of different types of equipment if we think about that five pounds or less that could be a packaged window air conditioner that could be a refrigerator that could be a chest freezer uh that could be a water cooler there's a lot of different things ice machines dehumidifiers those are all things that are included in type one so if you uh become a small appliance repair person you're required to have type one and core uh type two is persons who maintain service repair dispose of appliances containing more than 5 pounds of refrigerant or if the installation requires charging that's us anytime anytime we have a system that has to be put together where we have to calculate the refrigerant charge anytime we have soldering or flaring that is type two that is us so in the residential and Commercial and industrial air conditioning that is going to be a type two license so we are required to have a type two license in our industry and there's quite a few technicians out there that only have a type one so this is a great great opportunity to study for your type two and for your type three uh type three is persons who maintain service repair dispose of low pressure appliances so that's centrifugal chillers that's you know low temp low pressure operating systems um it's a whole different classification of refrigeration but it's still Refrigeration it's the same Vapor compression cycle that we're talking about on even our fractional systems the same Refrigeration concept that is in your home refrigerator is going to be in these 100 ton centrifugal chillers so we need to be able to understand that those are still just a large refrigeration system but they have some special features and some special um special techniques that you need to know and so that is a whole separate um entity on its own if you achieve above 70% in all four areas core type one type two and type three you will then be awarded a universal and that's really the goal we all want you to achieve your Universal certification so that is a person who maintains Service Repairs both low and high pressure as well as small appliances so we really want you to achieve that so the test will have four sections to it so we'll have core we'll have type one type two type three each section will have 25 multiple choice questions all pulled out of a poll of around 2,000 or so questions so there's a bunch there's a variety of different test so the tests are randomly pulled if you come to one of our classes and we're doing the paper one I'm going to hold about 15 different paper manuals out in front of you you pick which one they're all different a technician must achieve a minimum passing score of 70% in each group in which they are to be certified for example if a technician seeking Universal Universal certification they must achieve a minimum of 70% or 18 of the 25 questions on each section on all four of them if a technician fails one or more of the sections they may retake the failed sections without retaking those sections in which they earned the passing score so say you go in and you pass core and you pass type two but you didn't get your Universal you're type three and type one well you can go back later and just retake the ones that you did not pass so you don't have to take the entire test over and I have a lot of people doing that there'll probably be people here that are with us this week and that's what they're here to do is to only take the sections that they did not pass there is one ception technician must achieve a passing score on the core plus one type so if you go in take the test and you only receive the 70% in your core you didn't get a type so then you're going to have to take the whole thing over again so study study study uh Federal Regulations require that this exam be conducted in a closed book exam by an authorized test proctor whether it's in person or whether it is through live video uh the only outside materials allowed are the TP chart and a calculator phones are not allowed and must be turned off and put away uh best to not allow phones in the testing room at all uh I know in our classes we've had people pull out their phones for answers before and we typically don't pull that student out right then we allow them to take the entire test because we're not going to disrupt the rest of the classroom and at the end of the test the person who's been using their phone or been using material it gets thrown in the trash is that simple if you cheat you cheat we don't allow it um use of any other electronic communication device or attempts to copy distribute uh post publicly share photos of exam questions Etc may result in revocation of certification will be reported to the US EPA that has been done I've talked to ESCO and they have verified that that um they have prosecuted people who have uh reproduced any of the test materials um personal ID will be required so driver's license um uh registered um identification card uh social security number which you'll be using using and then a home or a mailing address that you'll put on that application and that will be where your paper certificate gets mailed to so it could be home it could be work wherever you would like for that to go to uh you'll need to have your date of birth phone number and an email address and that will be all the information that is used to create your personal Esco account um as required all examination participants must be included in an online registry or look up by name city and state as well as certification achieved so there's you know Online Registry from ES because if you um if you apply for a job which a lot of a lot of property management jobs um a lot of Commercial Heating and Cooling and Refrigeration um jobs require a universal certificate so if you apply and you say that you have a universal and you actually don't they may call Esco and go hey does does H does John Brown have a universal and so they can use that as verification for what uh level you've required or acquired uh technicians will be able to opt out of the red stre by logging into the Esco group right there um the technicians should carefully study the core and all the sections in which they are seeking to achieve a passing score definitely take the free online prep um tests um they're right there at the escogroup.org practice again uh they are provided to give each uh candidate a sample of the type of questions they're not going to be the exact questions but it'll be a sample of similar questions I typically spend a lot of my time going over my compression cycle in class not going to have a lot of time to go through that today but we are going to go through the basics because it really all comes down to one philosophy and if you can understand this philosophy it'll make every piece of equipment you ever encounter a lot simpler if we look at any refrigeration system we have a low pressure side and we have a high pressure side and we are going to have the same function of components in any refrigeration system no matter how small or how large we're going to have a Vapor pump it could be driven by different mechanics but it's a vapor pump typically it's driven by an electric motor most of the compressors we know is a vapor pump on top and it's an electric motor on bottom or vice versa and we're going to use that compressor to increase pressure we're just going to pump it up we're going to send that Vapor because remember our compressor is a vapor pump only we're going to send that saturated Vapor that has all the heat we're going to send it into some type of a condenser coil it could be air coil it could be a water coil it could be a variety of different applications the whole purpose of the condenser coil is to reduce the temperature of that refrigerant Vapor so that it can cool back down past its D point so it turns back into liquid if we have an excess amount of liquid we can put it into a liquid receiver and then we're going to feed our liquid into a metering device of some type it could be a capillary tube it could be an expansion valve it could be a piston be a of things its entire purpose is to now reduce the pressure so we're going to take our liquid we're going to reduce its pressure so we can make it boil we reduce the pressure we reduce the temperature at which it boils as we pass through an evaporator we're going to boil all of our liquid off into a vapor if we have a little bit of liquid left in our Vapor we always um make an extra precaution we dump it into an accumulator which is just a tank so if we're working on a heat pump application or low temp application we may have an accumulator and sometimes on just Standard air conditioning compressors we'll have an accumulator it's just for a a reservoir so that we can make sure that no liquid gets back to our compressor so it's really a simple circuit it could be the exact same circuit if we're talking about a Residential Refrigerator we have the compressor on the bottom we have the condenser on the back or the bottom we do not have a typically a receiver we've got a capillary tube for a metering device an evaporator coil is up in our freezer and then we have an accumulator that's actually right next to our compressor if we're talking about a residential air conditioning system we're talking about a compressor outside we're talking about our condenser coil outside that has a fan that's an air over system if it was a heat pump we might have a receiver on that thing um if we uh get to our metering device it could be a capillary tube it could be a piston it could be an expansion valve all do the same thing it's just to reduce the pressure we're going to have an evaporator coil that sits inside and our blower fan is blowing air across it and then we're coming back to our compressor simple system if we're talking about the air conditioning system in our vehicles we have a vapor pump that does not have an electric motor driving it it's got what it's got a pulley yeah it's got a pulley that's being driven by our engine and so it's just a vapor pump that's pumping our refrigerant to a condenser coil which sits in front of our radiator and it has our radiator cooling fans blowing air across it it's going to go through either a piston or through an expansion valve a lot of modern vehicles use an expansion valve it's going to go into an evaporator coil which is a evaporator core which sits in front of your heater core in your dash and we use our Dash fan to blow air across it and we're going to come back to our compressor if it is a commercial ice machine I've got a compressor that is going through a condenser coil which is typically Now using a tube and shell which we'll talk about in type three condenser that has City water running through it that's going to pull the heat out of our refrigerant and send the heat down to the drain it's going to go through a metering device which is typically an expansion valve it's going to go through an evaporator coil which now is just water being pumped over the evaporator so that we can reduce the temperature of the water to where the water freezes to make ice cubes it's the same principle that we're using in every uh commercial ice machine so we don't have a fan on the evaporator coil we don't typically have a fan on the condenser some of them do though um but it's just a simple refrigeration cycle if this is a 100 ton industrial Chiller providing um liquid refrigerant to run commercial machinery and our air conditioning systems it's still just got a great big compressor outside it's got a big condenser coil outside that's got a bunch of fans if it was a big cooling tower it's actually got water pumping over it you've seen you know the steam coming out of those kind of condensers that's all it is just a condenser coil it's blowing air and it's removing the heat out of the water it's going to go back into some kind of a metering device into some kind of evaporator core whether it's air conditioning system or refrigeration system can run all sorts of stuff same philosophy so don't get confused by the size of equipment it's still going to be the same Vapor compression cycle and it doesn't matter what refrigerant is in it we use different refrigerants because of their characteristics but they all do the exact same thing I could spend probably two hours just on this and we have a lot if you go back to like our super heat and subcooling uh courses that we did on YouTube um we really dive into that Brian does a great job talking about super heat and subcool so if you want a review on that go back to our YouTube channel and you can follow through that stuff um so there's different types of compressors um if you look at those every compressor is going to have a lows side valve and a high side valve it's going to bring in a low pressure vapor and it's going to pump it up to a high pressure Vapor um the three stages inside of a condenser coil no matter what condenser coil it is remember same philosophy it's going to come in with superheated Vapor as it passes through there it's going to start turning back into liquid drops by the time we get to the end of it we should be all liquid and by the time we get to all liquid we're actually going to cool it just a little bit more to make sure that it is completely liquid with no vapor in it and that is going to be a subcooled liquid now same liquid it's just a little bit cooler it's not change state it changed state in the condenser it's just a cool liquid our metering devices are all doing the exact same thing it's just reducing that pressure we're we're coming in with a high press liquid High Press subcooled liquid and we're coming out with a low pressure liquid it's not a vapor it's a liquid it has vapor in it but it's still about 75% liquid and 25% Vaper that vapor is what we call the flash gas but it is primarily liquid at this point it's just a um lower pressure liquid but whether it's a capillary tube or fixed orice or a pist a expansion valve all doing the exact same thing if we look at an evaporator you know what we're doing in an evaporator coil all of them every type we run into we're going to take that mixture that 75% liquid 25% Vapor mixture we're going to go into the evaporator it's going to boil on its own it doesn't need any assistance from us we reduce the pressure which caused it to start boiling so we don't need to move air across it but we're going to go ahead and take advantage of that process and try to remove some of the heat from our space or remove some of the heat from our water that's passing over on a commercial ice machine so we're going to pass through that system all of our energy is exchanged while we are boiling from a liquid to a vapor right so by the time we get to the end of our evaporator coil it should all be boiled off there should be no more liquid and so we just want to make sure there's no liquid because the next stage of our system is our compressor which is a vapor pump so we want to make sure we've boiled off so we know that we stopped boiling around here we just let that temperature rise a few more degrees so that by time it gets to the outlet it is considered superheated which just means it's heated above its boiling point you know if that was water at room temperature water boils typically at what 212 or so so if I measured some steam and it was 215 degrees I would say that oh it superheated by 3° it's all we're doing we're not changing its state once we turn to Vapor we're just we're there we're just going to heat it a little bit more just to make sure that there is no liquid getting back to our compressor liquid gets to our compressor it's going to destroy our Vapor pump or it's going to destroy the bearings in our motor all right A system that uses a thermostatic expansion valve or tev is usually equipped with a receiver located on the liquid line directly following the condenser because remember that expansion valve is expanding it's moving it's changing the flow of refrigerant so so if our compressor is just pumping along but our coil says hey I don't need that much volume right now I'm going to go ahead and use my expansion valve and I'm gonna i g pinch down a little bit well then that backs up how much liquid we have in our system so we store it in a receiver that's all it is just a tank to store excess an accumulator uh when used is located on the suction side so accumulators prevent any liquid that might flow from the evaporator to get into that compressor remember we can not get it in there we have service valves in our equipment we have typically a couple different styles of service valves depending on whether it's unitary air conditioning or it's on Commercial Refrigeration so if we look at the position of most of those if we were looking at a uh this is more common on the commercial refrigeration system so with those if you walk up to a commercial refrigeration system you put your gauges on it you're actually not going to have pressure right because if you walk up to a residential air conditioning system and you put your low loss fitting on here with your hose you're going to be able to read your pressure well it's a different style stem on Commercial Refrigeration Commercial Refrigeration is actually going to use what is called a back seated service valve you walk up to a commercial refrigeration piece of equipment and you put your gauges on there with your low loss fitting you're not going to read any pressure we also use some of these every once in a while in commercial air conditioning so if you walk up to a system don't ass assume that there's no pressure in there make sure what type of valve because this valve has a cap on it it typically has a hexagonal shaped uh fitting and then it has a long elongated stem cap or stem cover if you see that style of cap because if remember if you're talking about a residential a residential typically has a hexagonal cover but it's just a cover right it's just a flat topped cover if you have an elongated stem on your cap that means you have a long stem service valve and it's probably a back seated style so you actually have to take your service wrench and this has got a square tip on the end of it you take your service wrench and you run that in just even a quarter of a turn is sufficient so be aware that we have a couple different styles of service valves in our industry um how do you use a PT chart because not everybody understands a PT chart so what does a PT chart actually do it provides the pressure temperature relationship of refrigerants so when if we take it at its Core Essence what it is doing is telling us at the pressure that is in our system it's telling us what temperature our refrigerant is going to boil boil or condense so we can manipulate boiling points I do this in one of my classes when I'm doing this PT chart I actually take a a mason jar of water I put it on a desk and go hey what temperature does water boil at if you don't know you need to come back and watch some of our reflect string classes we actually talk about that because water is a water is a refrigerant it changes state it changes from a liquid to a vapor changes from a vapor to liquid it also changes from a liquid to a solid so we're just manipulating in the same way with refrigerants so whether the tank is um half full or has just a few ounces of liquid the pressure will be the same if both tanks are at the same temperature so the refrigerant is going to have a stable state in it and we actually show this in our classes as well I can tell what refrigerant is in a tank by letting it stabilize so if I leave it in a room that is 72 degrees overnight and I come back the next morning is still 72 I know that my refrigerant is stabilized at 72 degrees I can take my temperature pressure chart and go hey uh r410a at 72 degrees is X if I go r410a and it's an 80 degree room r410a at 80 degrees I can put my gauges on there and I'll have 236 PSI so it's a relationship uh to or temperature in our pressure a refrigerant will migrate to a compressor is crank case and mix with oil when there's a difference between the oil pressure and the refrigerant vapor pressure compressor crank case heater is used to control that so a comp a crank case heater is absolutely crucial on the operating of a system if you have a crank case heater particularly on heat pumps um you need to verify the condition of that crank case heater because it's used to keep that oil hot so our refrigerant doesn't migrate back into it remember we don't want liquid into our compressor uh an oil sample should be taken when the unit has had a leak or major component failure so we're going to be looking for contamination or acids in the system refrigerant oil samples are also taken when moisture acid or oil sludge formation oil Waxing or residual acidic oil from a burnout are suspected problems that's how we can tell what happened to the oil in the system uh finding and repairing leaks in the system will conserve refrigerant when servicing an appliance so flushing filled tubing with liquid refrigerant to clean the tubing after burnout is not recommended it is actually against the law we have specialty cleansing um there basically are refrigerants they're a boiling liquid but they're not a um a chlorine or Florine based refrigerant they're a solution a cleaning solution we use a lot of like r1x flush so we don't use refrigerant to flush out a line set we use certified cleaners uh after we make a major repair the plant should be dehydrated to by evacuating the system to a minimum of 500 microns every manufacturer has a requirement of 500 microns I actually see people that are routinely running them down to 250 just to verify that they have gotten even below the manufacturer's recommendation if you get them down to that point you know that you're going to have a nice dry system and we've actually got videos on how to properly evacuate a system and do it quickly and efficiently under no circumstances should a hermetic compressor be operated when there is a vacuum in the system electrical arcing can occur Ur they will burn the terminals inside of the compressor so we have to make sure that our electrical disconnect is off when we're pulling vacuum on our systems when we talk about the gauge manifold set I always teach in my classes how to read superheat and subcooling actually calculate superheat and subcooling using a gauge manifold set because they are a little bit different if you look at those and it's the most important tool in our industry to be able to understand the pressures inside of a system uh there's a low side and there's a high side and depending on the refrigerant the high pressure gauge may be rated 500 if it's an R22 system sometimes even lower than that and 800 if it's an r410a or higher now the compound gauge measures system pressure for low side in pounds per square inch PSIG and vacuum in inches of mercury this is what makes the low side gauge different than the high side gauge the high side gauge is just all positive pressure the lowside gauge is not really a lowside gauge it's called a compound gauge because it reads negative pressure in vacuum in inches of mercury and it reads positive pressure in PSIG one of the thing that I always point out to people because they don't always understand what our internal hashtags are if remember we're talking about our temperature pressure chart if I had a a a paper temperature pressure chart that is telling us at what temperature our refrigerant is boiling based on the pressure in the system that's all these inside dials are we've just taken that PT chart and put it on a gauge so if I put my gauge on and I have 60 PSI on my system then I know at what temperatures my refrigerants would boil if I had this is R22 on the green dial my R22 would start boiling at around 33 34 degrees right so anything above 33 34 I would be Vapor anything below 33 34 I want be liquid if I was an r410a system I would have my refrigerant boiling off at around 22 degrees if I was a R134a system my refrigerant would be blowing off at around 62 is somewhere in that ball point so all we have actually done is taking our foldout temperature pressure chart and we' put it onto our dials so that it's easy to see so I always teach people how to use these mechanical gauges before they go to an electronic set I love electronic manifold gauges but if you don't understand what they are calculating you're not doing yourself any justice if you don't know what we're talking about here I I highly recommend I I encourage you to spend some more time understanding superheat and sub coolant um so there's your high side gauge it's all positive no negative pressure on it whatsoever um an electronic manifold um may have combined temperature probes to measure those temperature so it can calculate super heat and C cool sub super heat and subcooling and I love using electronic gauges they do the job for us faster but like I said if you don't know what they're doing don't fool yourself don't look at a number and judge a system by the number that you're being told understand what that number is go back to our super heat and subcooling class EPA recommends that hoses be equipped with low loss fittings or valves that manually close or which close automatically to Men of Miser refrigerant loss when they are disconnected there's a name for this and you'll probably encounter this if you're taking a EPA regulated test of any type minor releases when connecting or disconnecting the hoses for servicing or recovery are considered to be a d Minimus release the minimum the Minimus this type of release is not considered unlawful so by law you have to have fittings on your hoses if you're just using standard hoses that are open on the end without any any type of a low loss fitting and you connect those onto an air conditioning or refrigeration system to service it and you take that off and all that refrigerant is escaping out of your hose you're actually breaking the law so something to be aware of we need to make sure it has fittings to make it a Dem Minimus release uh the gauge manifold and hoses must be pressure rated to handle the refrigerant that you're being that's being used if you go to yard Cale and pick you up an old set of R12 R22 manifold gauges you're not going to want to put that on that r410a system the hoses are probably not rated for burst pressure properly so be aware that your hoses need to be of proper ratings now when we get into the science of why we're here the main U the main topic is going to be stratospheric ozone depletion that's the whole reason the EPA is in our industry you know EPA is governing what we do because of effects that we have found in our ozone and it primarily happens with our Stratus Eric ozone depletion there's going to be a lot of science here so if you're a science buff you're going to enjoy this if you don't like science you may struggle on understanding some of this and and you need to understand what we're talking about um so be this would be really really good stuff to do prep courses on if any of this is unfamiliar to you so this just kind of rebrief of what we're going to be talking about so stratospheric ozone helps form the Earth's protective shield the ozone layer protects Earth from ultraviolet radiation from the Sun and we know that if if um if you're from my generation and and older um you're going to know the word the ozone hole you're going to you've been told about the ozone hole um a lot of younger Generations weren't focused as much on the ozone hole we're going to talk about that here in just a minute uh but through the 1990s particularly we started talking about this thing called the ozone hole and the hole in the ozone layer and um we talked about it in school and we started understanding that we had this hole in our ozone and we didn't really dive into what it was we just knew that it was there and we knew that it had um some negative effects well you know what that is when we start talking about the the ozone layer and the the pole in the ozone um we need to understand where it's coming from and what we're talking about is we're going to talk about stratospheric ozone depletion so the stratosphere is a uh a layer of vapors that is between 7 and 30 miles off from Earth surface very important to know between seven and 30 miles and uh ozone depletion potential is um it measures the ability of a substance to destroy ozone in the stratosphere so what scientists found in the 1990s when they when we started recognizing what this hole of the ozone is um and what it really is is it it's the hole is considered to be we think about it we just think about like something just burst through and burnt this hole into the stratosphere well it's not really really that it's really a a large area of the stratosphere where we have measured a depletion of ozone quantity in that area and is a very significant area but we also we were measuring it and we noticed it increasing we noticed this whole growing and we didn't really know why so we started looking at why the ozone was depleting so we started measuring different chemicals that were found in the stratosphere over a period of time and then we started looking at what things could be the potential um ozone depleting substances right so we started looking at that um and we were also finding that as the ozone layer was O the hole in the ozone or this depletion of ozone was increasing so we noticed some effects around the world and we noticed that it was a global problem that was affecting all of us so we needed to find out what it was what was going on why we were having this issue so one of the most serious results from the thinning and damaging the stratospheric ozone layer is an increase in the rates of skin cancer in humans and I can I'm here to preach this to you I mean I lost my father just couple not even two months ago from skin cancer he worked heavy machinery through the 1980s 1990s and 2000s before they started using canopies before they started understanding the severity of skin Cancers and we are really finding a huge increase in the amount of skin cancer in humans over the last three decades and we're finding that is very much because of the destruction of our ozone all these little spots on my face every few months I have to get them burnt and that is because of working in the HVAC Refrigeration industry being on roofs all the time being out in yards all the time it is you know as technicians we need to be very aware that we are working and living in the environment that is U that has become more dangerous over time so we started looking at what was going on why we were having these increases in skin cancers why were having these increases in cases of cataracts around the world and so we really started finding that it was a an effect of our environment that even our crop yields and and Marine organism you know we've all seen you know coral reef um you know destructions and Devastation and it's all happened in a very short WI of time right so we knew that this hole in the ozone was probably a culprit of all of these other things that we were finding so we started looking for that and we started measuring higher levels of chlorine and Florine so scientists started going okay well are there other places where we can get this and we did we would find that you know uh air samples taken over erupting volcanoes showed a increase in chlorine that would be up in in our Stratosphere and we're like oh maybe it's volcanic eruptions well then we'd start seeing that this the particular type of chlorine that was being released by volcanoes um would actually return back to the surface the way nature intended it to right but then we started finding that there was a lot of chlorine and Florine that was staying there and as we started measuring this increase of chlorine and Florine in the stratosphere we started noticing that it was a direct correlation to the chlorine and Florine that we were manufacturing down here at the crust at the surface so we found that the rise in chlorine measured in the stratosphere match the rise in the amount of Florine they were going up the same and they were a very different chemical formulation than the chlorine that was coming from the volcanoes and we noticed that this increase of chlorine and increase of Florine were following each other they were following a path so the rise in the amount of chlorine measured by NASA and other agencies and that were measuring it in the stratosphere over the past 20 it's almost 30 years now M matched the rise in chlorofluorocarbon and hydrochlorofluorocarbon Emissions over the same time so as they were tracking refrigerant use and refrigerant um release they went uh oh uh oh um we've got a problem um these refrigerants are are culprit um you know we talk about global warming a lot now but in the 90s we talked about the hole in the ozone because that's when we found the direct correlation you know yes carbon fuel emissions are a major component to global warming they don't have much to do with this ozone depletion factor and so what we found and it was very very clear that the culprit was chlorine manmade chlorine that chlorine containing refrigerants have changed the Natural Balance and dust thus depleted a significant part of our ozone layer and we went holy smokes let's study this a little bit further and let's find out what's going on so what they found was that if we look at an ozone molecule itself so an ozone molecule in its Essence is a is a um is a component that has three oxygen atoms all tightly bonded to each other right that's it oxygen oxygen oxygen but they molecularly connect and they form a very very tight Bond and by Design that's what they were constructed to do that's what they were created for and what they do by having that bond is that they reject ultraviolet radiation so what we did and we were able to prove this in Labs we' seen it going on in the stratosphere but we're able to prove this in Labs we would find that when we introduced a chlorofluorocarbon molecule with ultraviolet radiation we could simply take a you know UV light and we can take Vapor refrigerant and we can penetrate that with UV light and what would happen when ultrav Violet radiation came in contact with a refrigerant module and this is chlorofluorocarbon so we're talking like R12 ultraviolet radiation would separate off one of those chlorine molecules or multiple of those chlorine molecules then when you had that free chlorine molecule that free chlorine molecule could actually introduce itself with the ozone molecule and it had a mo weight that would draw off one of those oxygen molecules oxygen atoms so we no longer had an ozone molecule that had three oxygen atoms we would actually tear it apart with one of our chlorine atoms so our chlorine would bond with the ozone molecule pull off one of the oxygen atoms and now we were left with two new unique chemicals a chlorine monoxide and a diatomic oxygen O2 you know O2 is not a big deal right O2 is pretty good stuff the downfall is it didn't have that molecular tension that it used to have when it was an ozone molecule to reject ultraviolet radiation so now we have two new chemicals floating through the stratosphere chlorine monoxide and a datomic oxygen and we were able to measure those we were to measur measured an increase in chlorine monoxide measured an increase of diatomic oxygen measured a decrease in Ozone and unfortunately the ultraviolet radiation started penetrating through all because of a manmade chlorine molecule so the chlorine monoxide it will collide with other ozone molecules releasing its oxygen atoms and forming two2 molecules and leaving the chlorine free to attack another one so it used that chlorine molecule to destroy an ozone became a diatomic oxygen and a chlorum monoxide and then pull that chlorine off and begin that process over again so a single chlorine atom can last in the stratosphere for 120 years and while it is there it can destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules that's pretty significant so if you think about that if I take one pound of a chlorofluorocarbon I can potentially destroy 100,000 pounds of ozone molecules that's huge when we started seeing those numbers we immediately had to change make a worldwide stance to change things so the chlorine in our chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons they neither dissolve in water nor break down into compounds that dissolve in water so it doesn't just rain out of the atmosphere you know if we look at natural chlorine naturally occurring chlorine will dissolve in water and Rain back out of the stratosphere doesn't stay up there for 120 years so hydrocarbons are made up of hydrogen Florine and carbon right so all the hfcs that we work with hydrogen Florine and carbon they do not contain chlorine that affect the ozone layer but most hydrofluorocarbons have a high global warming potential so what we found was and we're going to dive into that a little bit further so in the 1990s we started going ho in the ozon from the chlorine oh boy we got to get rid of some chlorine so we started reengineering our refrigerants and we started removing the chlorine out of them what we ended up with now was hydrocarbons right so with hydrofor carbons we had no chlorine but we had a fair amount of Florine in them and so what we started seeing was as the ozone layer started repairing itself which it has been the ozone layer has been repairing itself very significantly for the last three generations but then we started noticing the Earth is still warming and went ah man what happened thought we got rid of that when we got rid of the chlorine well what we found was that we had another scenario that we didn't even look at when we were doing all of our studies in the 1990s we weren't looking at that global warming effect of the gases what we found was Florine was an additional culprit so when we're talking about ozone depletion we're talking about chlorine we're talking about global warming potential we're talking about Florine so global warming potential has esta was established to provide a comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases over a span of time so they had to have something to compare all of this against right even our our chlorine refrigerants and our Florine refrigerants we had to have something to base it because you know I can say hey that kid's bad well who we comparing that kid to right we have to have a standard to be able to measure things so we found CO2 to be that that we're going to measure and so we measure all of our refrigerants today based off from the effects of CO2 so all of our numbers are going to be comparative to CO2 so CO2 is used as a Baseline measurement for global warming potential and it's going to have a base value of one there is another refrigerant out there that has a zero we'll talk about that in a little bit but we don't want to use it so CO2 if any of you are familiar with Don Gillis and and the the good people over at Emerson we're seeing CO2 is going to be a refrigerant that's going to be widely used and we're going to dive into why CO2 is um being used as a base all right so let's talk about some global warming potential real quick so most hydrofluorocarbons hfc refrigerants such as r410a we all know that one they have high global warming potentials sometimes thousands of times greater than CO2 so a hydrocarbon and hydral oans hfo they have the lowest global warming because they have the low amounts of Florine right so we really have got to reduce the chlorine and we got to reduce the Florine no matter what if we look at the global warming potential of some of these new refrigerants like r600 and r290 which is purified propane and R 441 they are significantly lower when compared to the gwps or global warming potential of the hfc refrigerants such as 134a 407 404 410A we know those refrigerants right 134a in vehicles it's in um light Refrigeration equipment and Commercial Refrigeration equipment we know 40c is a rep replacement R22 style refrigerant we 404 is our commercial low temp refrigerant and r410a um all of these are on the way out they're all on chopping block we're going to dive into why um very quickly so with non ozone depleting and very low global warming potential characteristics hydrofor Olan or hfo refrigerants are a good fit for the hvacr equipment so you're going to be seeing a lot more of these hfo refrigerants most h H FC's have very high global warming potentials a characteristic that makes them damaging to the environment r410a main one right now um so refrigerants may be identified by their type you know whether they're it's all about what chemicals are inside of them those cfc's chloro floro carbon chlorine Florine carbon that's all it is hydrogen Florine chlorine and carbon and the American Society of heating refrigeration and air conditioning Engineers are ashray uh number they have the r plus the ashray number such as 134 it's all the chemical configuration so that's what we're using our designations for we have to start talking about classifications of refrigerants and we're going to have a little bit of this and probably every section of this um of this prep so when we look at refrigerants we're going to have a new classification chart and this is going to be very important because this classification chart is going to be used for a variety of applications because now we're talking about flammable refrigerants right so now we're going to start getting like the do and other different um Federal jurisdictions involved with the handling of our refrigerants because in the past we've not had flammable refrigerants we're going to have flammable refrigerants going forward so you need to understand this classification and you need to understand it very well if we look at the classifications it's going to have a letter it's going to begin with a letter if it has a low toxicity it's going to have an A if it has a higher toxicity to it it's going to have a b so that's going to get it into a classification then we're going to based on its toxicity how poisonous it is and then we're going to talk about how flammable it is and we're going to go right now we're going to go from one to three so if it has very low flammability it's going to get a one if it is very flammable like propane or butane which are very very flammable it's going to get a three if it is a low flammability it's probably going to get a two or a slight flammability and this when they say slight they mean it will not maintain its own combustion when Paul was doing our class on combustion analysis we're talking about the trifecta for for Flames we're talking about we need to have a source of fuel we need a source of oxygen and a source of ignition or heat Source right well with an A3 or with a three or a two once you light those they will maintain they will stay lit on their own when we get into an a2l they will not light unless they have a continual ignition Source they have to have a constant flame for those to have any type of flame off of them whatsoever so they cannot maintain their own combustion cycle basically and it's very important to know because A2 LS are going to be a classification that is going to take over our industry because it is uh low global warming and low or to know ozone bading so we need to know that chart very very very well come back and get familiar with that chart hint hint um CFC refrigerants uh they have the highest ozone depleting potential and are the most harmful to stratospheric Ozone so we found that out that that was found in the 90s CFC refrigerants contain chlorine Florine and carbon so chlorine is the component that poses the biggest threat to the ozone so that was like our r11s and our r12s um so so we we did a quick job of cutting those out of our system we'll talk about that again here in a minute um hyr chloro fluorocarbons hcfc refrigerants they contain hydrogen chlorine Florine and carbon the hydrogen makes them a little less harmful to the stratospheric ozone when compared to cfc's but this the Florine really does most of our damage so the hydrochlorofluorocarbon refrigerants that have an ozone depletion potential of more than zero they range between zero and one uh those going to be like hcfc R22 and r123 so we're going to talk about those a little bit further if we talk about um hfc refrigerants those are refrigerants that contain hydrogen Florine and carbon atoms right they don't have the chlorine um they have the lowest or no ozone depleting potential but they do have an effect on global warming because of the Florine so that would be like our 134s or r410a our 404 407 422b you know pretty common refrigerants to most of us especially in the uh residential HVAC and Light commercial world that's our common refrigerants we're going to see more hfos or hydrofor oans they contain hydrogen Florine and carbon um with at least one double bonded molecule so they have multiple carbon cores to them so they're a more complex um structure hfos have no ozone depleting potential because there's no chlorine in them but they do have a small effect on global warming because they have a little bit of Florine in them so it's all about working with oone depleting and the global warming and it's a hard balance for our chemist to come up with the right Solutions uh hfos are less flammable than hydrocarbons but they still are mildly flammable so they're going to have their own classification which is the a2l hfo refrigerants contain Florine making them less flammable than hydrocarbon refrigerants the Florine kind of tempers it a little bit um and that's one thing we have to talk about too A lot of people don't understand that um R 410A that we know it it is a mixture of two different refrigerants two different chemicals it is a 5050 blend of R32 and r125 R32 is slightly flammable so they mixed in R15 because it was a flame deterrent so r410a is actually R32 and r125 5 mixed 50/50 and as we move into some of these new refrigerants you're going to see a lot more of like that R32 most of the world uses R32 so don't be afraid of these new chemicals just need to understand where they come from so when someone talks about R32 because companies like Dy are going to be going to R32 in their package units here in just a couple of years just be aware that it's not a horribly new refrigerant it's half of the one that we already know r410a it just doesn't have the flame retardant in it so hfo refrigerants they are missable with Poe lubricants that's pretty good and one of the most common ones is r1234 YF it is an hfo refrigerant currently being used in chillers and if you didn't know R134A in the automotive industry because it has a significant flooring level was chopped off the block complete cut it off 2015 United States so if you have a vehicle manufactured in the United States that's not a commercial vehicle 2015 and above you don't have 134a in your vehicle anymore you have r1234 YF most people don't understand that we chopped R134a out of the automotive industry because of its flooring didn't really talk about it did we anybody ever you ever seen any commercialist said new and improved remember when r410a came out new and improve pureon we didn't do that with R1 12 three4 we just went uh hey x with the 134 so we're going to see that a lot in our industry I'm afraid we're going to see um regulations affecting our refrigerant faster than we have the opportunity to um to say anything about it uh so you know on all of our programs that's all we do is we try to prep you for what is changing in our industry and make you aware of it so when you encounter it you're not afraid of it if you are used to working on your vehicle and you go out to work on your 20 2015 or newer vehicle you pop the hood and you got your R134 a gauges and you go wait a minute something's different now you bet you it's been different for a few years just weren't aware of it so lots of changes in our industry if you've been to a uh a two-o pop cooler at a checkout lane at a grocery store near you it doesn't have R134A in it it has r290 hydrocarbon refrigerants are an elementary compound of hydrogen and carbon although flammable these refrigerants have the least amount of danger to the environment Hydro hydrocarbon refrigerants have no ozone depleting potential that's cool no chlorine um and a very small effect on global warming like really really small flooring level so the gwp values less than 10 very very low U on r600 and r290 r290 is currently the replacement choice of R134A in small fractional systems we'll talk about that a little bit we can't use a whole lot of it why it's flammable nobody wants four pounds of propane in their air conditioning system do they oh that's right California does some hydrocarbon refrigerants are considered natural refrigerants right like propane very natural we just have to filter it uh propane cylinders for grilling should never be used as a refrigerant as they contain impurities you know we add sulfur to those so we can smell it so propane and its purest has no odor to it so our r290 propane I'm at home I'm not at the shop was at the shop I'd actually show you we carry one pound cans of r290 here at Johnstone Supply it's purified propane has no impurities in it and it does not smell so one of the dangers of some of these HC refrigerants is that they don't have an odor to them if I have a leak on a r290 system I don't smell it it's not like the propane in our Grill um we have a couple different types of refrigerants so I want to talk about aot Tropic and non-azeotropic mixtures so an aot Tropic refrigerant mixture contains two or more refrigerants right so if we look at a you know a chemist they're trying to balance all these different chemicals so that we can have a safer chemical so we're going to have all sorts of new chemicals out there because chemists are going hey let's mix these things together and let's find the safest ones so with a aot Tropic refrigerant at a certain pressure an aot Tropic mixture evaporates and condenses at a constant temperature so that just means I can take different chemicals pour them all together and they act like one chemical that's it so it acts like a single component over its entire range so an aot Tropic mixture acts like one mixture so no matter what temperature it's at or whatever pressure they correlate exactly we have another one though because not all chemicals like each other so if we talk about Z Tropic or non a Tropic um the refrigerant mixture are mixtures of components that have different boiling points and it's a mixture of a blend of different refrigerants so the blend may be binary which means it has two parts or tary which means it has three parts to it if we look at r410a r410a is a binary and it does not have a perfect Glide to it we call it near aat Tropic there's actually about a half a degree or so so even though we got two different chemicals in r410a they don't like each other perfectly they have about a half a degree difference on them because that R32 and that r125 they boil at about a half a degree different so there's a slight difference when we first came up with r410a manufacturers were very afraid of this they you know when we first started having warrant the evaporator coils a lot of Manufacturers give you a refrigerant allowance because they wanted you to pull all that refrigerant out because I might be able to lose if I was in one half a degree from that boiling point I could lose one of those chemicals not the other and we talk about that here in just a second so what happens is when we have a blended refrigerant Blended refrigerants are normally associated with having what is called a temperature Glide which means they don't act exactly the same together it's due to the Blended Parts having different pressures for their saturation temperature right you know if I have I can take some of them like a temperature Glide can range a few ten of a degree like r410a 510 of a degree to 12 degrees or more and that gets a little bit scary because what that means is if I'm used to using my temperature pressure chart I'm used to looking at my gauges if I went to you know my chart that I had earlier at two 268 or something like that PSI for um that that refrigerant it was like 22 degrees or something anyhow if I look at my chart I know exactly at this pressure my refrigerant is boiling at this temperature right that's easy to calculate my superheat and subcool because it's it's right there well if I have a blended refrigerant I may have a window and when in the commercial world when we moved from R12 and we were um taking R12 out one of the in refrigerants we had was r414b some of us know as hot shot hot shot had a Glide to it which mean this it had a bubble point and a d Point based on its two different refrigerants so if I would put my gauges on there and I say maybe I looked at my gauges and I went okay r414 um actually instead of it having a an exact temperature here I looked on my chart and it had this Glide this other color on my chart and I went what is that other color and it said well it's not an exact temperature now it's going to be a temperature here because of this refrigerant and it's going to be a temperature here of this refrigerant so it's basically telling me that at one point at one refrigerant I will condense here and at this one I will condense here but in between I can have a mixture one refrigerant could be vapor and the other one is probably still liquid so I had a window now of my boiling point it wasn't exact number it was hey one of your chemicals is going to start boiling here and the other one is not until I get down to here so I open up a window and it changes the characteristic of that refrigerant quite a bit and as we see some of these new refrigerants out you're going to start seeing more about Bubble point and dupoint we haven't heard about it in a long time since the 1990s when we were starting to do interim refrigerants once we went over to r410a we kind of said n we don't really need that it's only half a degree we're not going to worry about that much but some of these new refrigerants we're going to see you might start seeing this and one of the effects that you have on it if I had an R12 cooler and I was running it on a pressure control instead of a thermostat my R12 I knew that at 40 degrees my R12 was right here right well when I took out my R12 and I put in R14 instead of it being there it was there so my pressure control couldn't keep my temperature right at 40° anymore it would swing it because I had like a 6° Glide that mean I had a 6° temperature Glide so instead of it staying right at 40° I might run down to 37 and I might go all the way up to 43 and the customer will go hey my cooler used to keep 40 degrees all the time now it's 37 and 43 all over the place I go yep that's because that new refrigerant that new refrigerant has a window in it and they're like I don't care put the old stuff back in and you go I can't it's gone so don't be surprised when we start having those kind of scenarios in our industry so it's good to brush up on this stuff so Z Tropic and some near ASAT Tropic Blends use bubble and do point to indicate the condensing and evaporating temperatures they're there they're just at a little bit different place so bubble Point that's kind of the liquid the values are used when calculating condenser subcooling because remember on a condenser I just want to make sure I'm all the way liquid so when I have a window I know hey yeah my top one's liquid but my other chemical says hey I ain't liquid yet you got to wait till I'm down to liquid so it makes that window there the D Point same kind of thing it's going to be used for superheat that's going to be on our evaporator because one chemical is going to say hey I've already boiled off and the other one says sorry sucker I got four more degrees before I start boiling so it makes a window that that thing is actually going to boil so dupoint and uh bubble Point are going to be more common in our industry than what you're used to right now uh R400 series refrigerants r410a R 404 407 422 uh they are near aat Tropic Blends um Blends that can leak from a system at uneven rates due to different Vapor pressures which can affect the percentage of each refrigerant you know the proper charging for any R400 refrigerant is um is to weigh the refrigerant in on the high side with liquid we don't put it in as Vapor that's why when we're charging with r410a we put our tank upside down right because we want to make sure it's all liquid that wasn't always necessarily so because if we had like an R22 we didn't worry about it R22 If I Had It Up upright I just had R22 Vapor on top right and R22 liquid in the bottom r410a depending on the temperature of my tank I could have maybe more of my r125 in vapor form than what my R32 is my tank may be a perfect blend 50/50 but my vapor might not because they boiled at different temperatures so we have to put it in as all liquid on any 400 series refrigerant so what that means is if we look at that let's just take um let's take imagine we were looking at this as r410a right which kind of is actually um you have different fractionization of the refrigerants which means that if I have a leak at a certain temperature I could actually leak more of one refrigerant than the other so r47 r407c that has a very high temperature Glide right so let's let's look at r47 C instead of r410 so r407c it's a blended refrigerant it's got a a couple refrigerants in it right so when it's in its liquid stage it's two chemicals that are equal balanced right so in liquid form it acts as one liquid when it boils because remember they boil at different temperatures when they boil I could have a change in my refrigerant so if I look at that thing and I went okay so now this is just for I don't know exactly what this temperature would be because I don't know what my pressure is but let's just say at whatever pressure my system is my r407 C is in liquid form let's just say 40 degrees and let's just say at this pressure whatever pressure we are at 40° one of our chemicals begins to boil before the other one so let's just say chemical a we'll use chemical a Bo boils off at 40 and chemical B doesn't boil off until 42 and my temperature on my tank is 41° so it's sitting in my van it's 41 degrees outside in liquid form all of my liquid is 50% chemical a and 50% chemical B but at 41° as soon as I got above 40 chemical a started boiling into vapor chemical B did not so I started getting more of chemical a and so then I Rose to just below 42 degrees 41.8 chemical B hadn't started boiling yet and chemical a had already been boiling for another degree a little over degree what ends up happening is that Vapor that's in the top of my cylinder now has the potential to be 75% of chemical a and only 25% of chemical B because it hasn't boiled off my liquid's still the same I still have a pretty even level of 50/50 liquid but because they started boiling off a little bit different I could have more of chemical a than chemical B and that is what we consider fractionization what if this was an evaporator coil running at 41.8 degrees that's pretty realistic right if I had a leak if this was an evapor Ator coil and I had a leak at the top or at the outlet of my evaporator coil over time running at 41.8 I could leak all of chemical a and almost none of chemical B so my 407 c ends up not even being a 50-50% mixture anymore it changes very very drastically so it's something to be aware of we were scared of that when our 410A came out and then we found it was only a half a degree wasn't a big deal but 407 C you bet you you have a leak on r407 it doesn't matter the size of the leak all of that liquid comes out and you put all new liquid back in when you're done repairing um even though the pressure temperature chart relationship and operating Char characteristics may be almost the same the refrigerants cannot be interchanged so I can't take out an R22 and just slap an r407 without looking to see that it's uh operating the same I can't take a a half of a 40 I can't take a low R22 system and dump 407 on top of it because I'm making a new chemical composition right so although the saturation pressure temperatures behave uh similar um the potential frants can do damage they can you know oxidize copper tubing all sorts of characteristics whenever you start blending refrigerants you become a new chemist and I don't know that any of us are qualified to know what that chemical is so due to the flammability of some um hydrocarbons and hfos the equipment must be designed to handle the refrigerant therefore EPA regulates the maximum amount of refrigerant that can be used in the new systems by their type and by their use so that r290 that's been used in those coolers is just a few ounces it's actually me it's in grams I don't know if we'll get into that that might be a separate class uh when retrofitting or converting a system use a different refrigerant only EPA approved substitute refrigerants can be used remember EPA does not approve any substitute refrigerants as direct drop in Replacements to service an R22 or any other system EPA doesn't say that EPA is just teaching you what proper refrigerant procedures are a lot of our chemical manufacturers are going to be the ones that's going to dictate what are the best refrigerants um so we have low medium high and very high pressure systems to better Define leak rates and service recovery uh yeah recovery levels the EPA list refrigerants in four liquid phase pressure ranges at a 105 degree condensing temperature so if I have four operating systems all operating at the same day and all of those are running about 104 degree condensing temperature then I'm going to have different characteristics of different different refrigerant system so let's look at some of those real quick so there'll be our different classifications if we look at low pressure refrigerants they have a pressure of 30 PSI or lower at a liquid phase temperature of4 degrees so those are some of our lower temperature stuff lower pressure stuff like R11 r123 R 245 and one of the newer ones hfo 1233 so hfo 1233 is going to be a low pressure it's going to do some replacement for some of these commercial chillers and such if we look at medium pressure applications uh they have a pressure between 30 and 155 at a uh a liquid phase temperature with 100 105 degree condenser so that's going to be like our2 124 409 134a 600 1234 YF and that 1234 Z so they're considered medium pressure systems if we look at High Press systems a lot of us are going to be from familar with this those are systems that have a pressure between 155 and 340 so their head pressure is going to be between 155 and 340 when it has a condens or temperature of 104 degrees so that's most of the refrigerants we know um R22 r404 407 422b 422d r410a 441 and 717 so what we work on in residential hbac is considered a high press application we do have now a very very high pressure class of refrigerants they have um high side pressures over 340 de when we have a condenser that's at 104 degrees um the main one and we'll talk about it some more is CO2 CO2 is classified as r744 we have different oils in our systems um most hfc or hcfc um refrigerants andary Blends use synthetic alkal Benzene used to use a lot of alal Benzene oil in our systems especially with our you know reciprocating compressors um when retrofitting hcfc equipped refrigerants systems to hfc refrigerants or when working with newly manufactured systems synthetic polyester oil is most commonly used so you most of us are familiar with Poe you know polyester polyester oil um ester-based oils cannot mix with any other type of oil so that's the thing we have to be careful with sometimes when we change refrigerants we actually have to change oil as well depending on what our operating system is so when we talk about um retrofitting systems before retrofitting an hcfc system to an hfc refrigerant the other types of oils must be removed from the system before adding the Ester base I did that a lot in my commercial industrial rack systems so if I had um say I had a commercial medium temp system that was operating on R22 when I took that R22 out it probably had an alcal benzing style oil we had to actually drain all all the oil out of that entire system had to go through and replace all the oil rings and put new polyester oil in it to be able to go to you know a new refrigerant so um it can be very timec consuming to retrofit a system with a new refrigerant care must be taken when using Ester based oils they are very hygroscopic and will absorb moisture out of the air and through some containers so polyester oil if I take me a can of nice clear polyester oil open up my can take my take my safety device off from it I put it into a container it looks pretty clear might have a little ttin of yellow to it and I put it on the table if I have a fairly humid room and I come back tomorrow it's actually going to be higher level inside of that and it's going to be milky because it is actually absorbed moisture from the air so our 410A that we use it uses Poe oil so we have to be aware that these Poe oils are quite hygroscopic and we actually have manufacturers like Dyke and moving into newer style oils uh trying to get away from some of that u a part of you doing uh an understanding refrigerant management is understanding where we came from so a lot of this was U brought to us through the Mont protocol and the Clean Air Act so there's going to be some questions on this and they want you to understand the history of where we came from so the um United States is part of the Montreal protocol which is an international treaty that addresses ozone depleting substances so it's not just the refrigerants that you know it's it's a variety of different substances that are that use manufactured chlorine right because that chlorine is our culprit so we are a part of the Montreal protocol and as part of that um what they decided was when they when they met for this we'll talk about the date here in a minute when they met for this they decided that we had to make a a change to our refrigerants because we knew you know scientifically proven that our refrigerants was a major culprit in the change of the world that we live in so to stop the damage to the stratospheric ozone layer uh the United States is phasing out or has already phased out the use of all chlorocarbons hydrochlorofluorocarbons and any other refrigerants that are harmful to the environment harmful to the environment so it's based on the chemical composition we started with chlorine but we're now moving into the Florin ones so if we look at that section 608 of the Clean Air Act so that's you portion of the regulation that we use which that is what governs our license this is where our license comes from right here so section 608 of the Clean Air Act sets forth the rules and regulations for refrigerant handling in the hvacr industry us there is a section 609 and it pertains to Automotive Paul Grim master technician here with the 609 so he's carrying a 608 and a 609 they're two different certifications but it's for the same thing it's for safe refrigerant handling uh we are the HV CCR industry and we are governed by section 608 so section 608 certification allows a technician to purchase or handle regulated refrigerants you cannot come into a Johnstone Supply and buy a jug of refrigerant without a 608 license so Distributors that sell hcfc hfc or other regulated refrigerants must verify the purchaser is or employe a section 608 Certified Technician so that is our responsibility we actually keep the your certification number on file at con Stones under under your name so anyone performing an activity that violates the refrigerant circuit including removal of refrigerant or replacing a component containing a regulated refrigerant must be certified at the proper proper level and have the type of recovery equipment that is required for that section as we dive into type one type two and type three we'll go over all of those individually so you know it is illegal to knowingly release CFC refrigerants hcfc refrigerants or hfc refrigerants during the service maintenance repair or disposal of appliances a technician must have their section 608 certification card in their possession when performing an activity regulated by the section 608 if your 608 certification card is lost request a replacement from your certifying organization not the EPA the EPA does not they govern it they don't issue it that's where companies like Esco who provides this fantastic presentation come into play they are the educational body and the governing body of the license EPA just sets the requirements uh a person is not required to be a section 608 Certified Technician when servicing an external electric circuit or sections of the system that do not involve the refrigerant components so you can be an apprentice and and you can help service that AC unit you can do electrical diagnosis but if you put those gauges on that thing you better be certified because if an EPA inspector comes by and asks for your card and you don't have it somebody's getting a nasty fine the clean Air Act um so that is part of the EPA regulation allows for releasing an exempt refrigerant like ammonia or CO2 or a small amount of refrigerant mixed with nitrogen like when we test charge systems for leak detection otherwise they don't allow it um as of 2017 look at this as of 2017 a technician not the company the technician can be fined 4453 9 per day per violation for violating the Clean Air Act including knowingly releasing non-exempt refrigerants from appliances um so pretty significant fines available so these are you know these are the regulations that um you know support the necessity for a 608 license uh service technicians who violate the Clean Air Act Provisions may lose their certification in addition to paying fines and be required to appear in court you know it's taking this stuff very seriously it's the technician's responsibility to comply with any future changes in the law or EPA regulations after a technician becomes certified that's why I've been encouraging everyone to join this program even if you're already certified because there are a lot of changes that are happening in our regulations and it is the technician's responsibility to stay up to date it's not like a lot of state licenses that require continuing education hours uh your EPA it's a voluntary you know education process and so we highly encourage you to stay educated with new rules and regulations uh state and local governments May establish laws that contain stricter requirements than the Clean Air Act so you know local municipalities can enact more stringent regulations if they want to what this is just saying is this is the minimum expectations so the phase out for the production and import of newly manufactured R22 and hcfc 142b will be in year 2020 we all know that R22 is out the door after the phase out uh of hcfc refrigerants in 20 30 that's all now look at that all hcfc refrigerants in 2030 supply of those refrigerants for equipment servicing will come from recovered and reclaimed gases only it's all hcfcs it is not a violation of the refrigerant management regulations under the Clean Air Act to service a system that uses cfc's or hcfcs after the phase out of those right reclaimed refrigerant must meet ahr standards remember we get into Ahri we're talking about health and safety before it can be resold under epa's regulations very strict requirements we'll talk about that in a minute too uh technicians can only charge use CFC hcfc or hfc refrigerants back into the same Appliance or into another Appliance owned by the same owner so if you have a apartment complex that owns a whole bunch of R22 systems and you have clean R22 coming out of a system because you're just upgrad upgrading to an r140a system or or whatever that r410a can actually be reused by that same owner can't be charged for it but it can be reused by that same owner cannot go anywhere else and be used but it can be used by that same owner used refrigerant May no longer meet the Ahri standards because you know it could have water could have moisture in it could have acid could have all kinds of contaminations um so it cannot change ownership without being reclaimed when we also talk about some of the clean a stuff Montreal protocol all CFC hcfc hfc's and the hfos refrigerants recovery equipment must meet EPA standards so recovery equipment must be tested according to Ahri standard 740 good one to know recovery machines May uh be able to recover one or multiple types of refrigerants and most of ours are now some of our older recovery units which we actually talked about in our recovery equipment class some of our old ones actually used oil for the actual recovery process and we had to change oil every time that we used those because we had different refrigerants and some refrigerants didn't like the oils so we had the potential to contaminate our equipment very easily um discant humidifiers are not covered by EPA section 608 and they do not because they do not contain a refrigerant um self-contained recovery devices remove refrigerant from an appliance without the assistance of components in the appliance now we're going to talk about some Oddball stuff here and it's it's going to apply primarily to type one and to type three type type one type three not a lot for type two but you still need to be aware of it we have two different types of recovery systems so we have the self-contained and we also have what we consider what we work with the most so recovery equipment that relies on the compressor in the The Appliance um or the pressure of the refrigerant and Appliance is considered to be a self or system dependent and a lot of people don't encounter these but we're going to we need to be aware of what they actually do and we'll spend a little bit more time on that here in a minute so to make it easier to recover refrigerant EPA regulations require appliances that do not have service valves to have a service aperture or a process stub you'll find that on uh packaged window air conditioners on um domestic and fractional refrigeration systems so that refrigerator that is in your house does not have service fittings on it it has a process St that comes off which is just a piece of copper that's been pinched off and soldered and that is it you don't have service ports on that thing whatsoever and you'll see that quite often in our um type one equipment under five pounds when disposing of appliances with 5 to 50 pounds of refrigerant EPA does not require technicians or the company employing the technician to record the model and serial of the appliance however records must be kept that include the type of refrigerant the quantity of refrigerant in its type the quantity recovered from disposed appliances and each calendar month and quantity of refrigerant by type sent for reclaim or destruction these are all new regulations that are going to be affecting our industry that people who have taken the EPA before last year probably not aware of and we're going to be going over a lot more of these um these newer requirements on recordkeeping because it's going to change our industry significantly a shot down in 2019 uh 2020 is probably the year for all this stuff to be completely in in effect so epa's refrigerant man regulations exempt certain refrigerants from the venting prohibition right because remember we can't vent a refrigerant except certain ones and we'll learn about what those certain ones are U this can occur when and if the EPA determines that a certain refrigerant does not pose a threat to the environment if it is released so some natural refrigerants such as CO2 can be purchased by someone who is not section 608 because um it is just a a natural refrigerant uh one of the things is it's 9:00 all right thank you uh it's probably going to go um it it may go a little bit over uh so just hang in tight everyone and log get through just a little bit more and we'll finish up uh tomorrow actually um yeah let me get through a couple more slides uh it is lawful to service existing R22 systems and use existing supplies of R22 it is not legal to top off an R22 charge with another refrigerant such as an r410a or any other refrigerant topping off off of one type of refrigerant with another can void equipment warranty ruin the refrigerant damage the equipment and cause severe personal injury or even death so when discarding or disposing cylinders of CFC refrigerants hcfc refrigerants hfc's or hfos recover all remaining refrigerant render the cylinders useless and recycle the metal sounds like a great place to stop doesn't it lots and lots and lots and lots of information on this and uh there's so much stuff to cover and that's why even entire week of doing one one to one and a half hour classes is um is going to be tough to cover everything so there is a lot of effort that that you can do on your part uh you can purchase the study manual uh I should have this back up on our channel so you can do some revisiting of what we've been discussing today you got all of the free practice test at esco.com and um just do some do do diligence for yourself invest in yourself I keep preaching this to everyone right now is the perfect time to invest in yourself and here at Johnstone Supply that's what we've been doing we've been providing free education temporarily free education to build yourself and to make yourself more of an asset for when we go back to our industry so I appreciate everybody hanging on with us for an hour and a half and uh look forward to regrouping tomorrow and I'll see you all at 7:30 tomorrow everybody have a good day