What do you think about it? Does somebody make the cource and examination?
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What do you think about it? Does somebody make the cource and examination?
Are you talking about this in relation to your home country or worldwide?
Don't take so long between your posts (1 year), join in and enjoy.:)
EPA is US only, it holds zero waight around the rest of the world that I know of any way, Canada will not acknowledge it I know that much, as I understand US doesn't acknowledge our ODS cards (http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envision/Ozone/faq.htm)
Would be nice if some one made a unified system.
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Sailorbg, unless you are sailing to the US, the EPA certification scheme is of no use to you, except perhaps accademic interest.
If you are in Bulgaria, since accession to the EU last year, you should be preparing for the EU Refrigerant Regulations on ODS Gases and F Gases.
There may be links on the Europa sites or on your government web pages.
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In the U.S. The EPA requires a universial certificate to purchase refrigerants, most large companies like Trane offer a 1 day course, 100 question test. fairly simple.
EPA certification in the US was a good first effort toward upgrading technician's awareness and behavior regarding emissions of Ozone depleting and Global warming refrigerants. I regret to say it, but the test is pretty shallow and not used as a continuing education credit, consisting of questions regarding what year something happened or will happen, and a slight view of penalties, trigger leak rates based on the amount of refrigerant in a system versus annual refrigerant replacement.
There are tremendous vagaries in the interpretation of the principles set forth within the EPA certification. For example, if the owner has a valid EPA card, he can send a driver to pick up refrigerant from a wholesaler as long as the wholesaler has a card on record.
Other vagaries... the contractor is NOT responsible to keep records of refrigerant usage. The USER is the one responsible. But the user defers this responsibility toward the contractor in interesting ways.
Supermarket chains might demand a list of employees with EPA certifications and copies of their cards. They furthermore often ask for model and serial numbers of refrigerant recovery equipment. Refrigerant usage forms are becoming a second item to attach to the Service Work Order, even though the SWO has this information.
Sigh. In the US, the Law a good intention that makes it easy to obey without much danger. I don't want EPA tests to become more rigid... perhaps they could become more like continuing education mandates, however.
What will really make a difference and is very new in the US is the Greenchill Partnership program the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting.
I am much more comfortable with partnerships and voluntary action than I am with an arbitrary and often ridiculous set of laws to obey.
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/downloads/GreenChillFlyer.pdf
I think it would be great if Refrigeration-Engineer.com joined this partnership.