June 1, 2021, is the 225th birthday of Sadi Carnot, an original thinker who was not afraid to ask the questions that nobody else had thought. His attempts to answer them were hampered by deficiencies in the scientific theory of

It’s said that an engineer only needs two things in his toolkit: duct tape and WD-40. If something moves and it shouldn’t—duct tape! If doesn’t move but it ought to—WD-40. If it should move and does, or shouldn’t and doesn’t,

Last month I wrote about the economics of engineering and the well-known saying about engineers doing it cheaper, but there were two aspects of this line of thought that I couldn’t fit into that one-page column. After some further consideration

I grew up in an engineering family and, having no imagination, followed in the footsteps of my father and grandfather into the refrigeration business. I have therefore always been familiar with the aphorism that an engineer is someone who can

I was privileged at the start of December to hear a talk presented by Dr. David Arnold, Fellow ASHRAE, past president of CIBSE and a regular attendee at ASHRAE’s annual conferences. David was giving a sneak preview of his book

I don’t often get to blow my own trumpet here, but the beginning of a new year is a good time for self-evaluation, and good news is always worth sharing. Ten years ago we commissioned a large river source heat

It’s rare to find a set of market circumstances that affect the whole world in the way that 2020 has seen. Looking back over the past nine months it is remarkable to see how much changed. Now is a good

One subject has, until now, been neglected in the columns I have written for ASHRAE Journal despite the fact that it is one of the oldest applications of refrigeration and has been developed over the last two centuries into a

This is the third of three columns focused on the process of evacuating a refrigeration system and focuses on the test element of that process, including a look at how the vacuum fits within the rest of the test regime.

In last month’s column I wrote about the process of pulling a vacuum on refrigerating systems and highlighted some good practice points for care of the vacuum pump and how it is connected to the system for best effect. Here