SOSİAD (Refrigeration Industry Businessmen Association) has launched another international project to combat climate change. The UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) project, "Environmentally Friendly Cooling in Combating Global Warming" awareness project, was held on 26 June at Taksim Point Hotel, a meaningful day for the refrigeration industry.
In his speech at the opening of the meeting, SOSİAD Chairman Turgay Karakuş said "As SOSİAD, to support the World Cooling Day on June 26, to celebrate this day together with professional organizations all over the world, we are launching our project, a project of United Nations Industrial Development Organization, which we attach great importance to, today."
SOSİAD, partner of international projects
Karakuş gave information about the activities of SOSİAD, one national and two international projects. He remarked that with the national Sustainable Awareness Project, whose motto is "Vocational High Schools Matter", it is aimed to guide students with high technical skills, three-dimensional intelligence, and cognitive skills to the departments related to cooling in vocational high schools and thus to increase the quality of vocational high school education, to inform qualified vocational high school graduates about the opportunities in the cooling sector and to bring them to the sector.
Regarding international projects, Karakuş said: "REAL Alternatives 4 LIFE, an EU project, including the European Association of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heat Pump Contractors (AREA), of which we became a full member in 2006, aims to promote the spread of low-impact refrigerants throughout Europe."
Within the scope of the project, an online training platform consisting of 9 modules was translated to Turkish by SOSİAD in order to increase the knowledge on environmentally friendly refrigerants. Five representatives of SOSİAD received training on service techniques suitable for CO2 and hydrocarbon refrigerants in Belgium, Italy and Germany and were certified as authorized instructors. Training of trainers was held in Turkey, the participants were certified. The project will end in 2020.
A UNIDO Project in the service of nature
Karakuş also gave the following information about the project, "Demonstration and Pilot Activities for Encouraging Low Global Warming Potential (GWP) Refrigerants in the Republic of Turkey", shortly called Demonstration Project, of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO): “This project is about measuring the energy efficiency level of freon gas cooling systems with high potential to cause global warming, compared to alternative fluids, and the revision and reporting of this measurements." The Ministry of Environment and Urbanization is monitoring this project together with UNIDO. During the project, three pilot applications will be determined by SOSİAD, refrigerant change will be done in the existing cooling system, tests and measurements will be monitored at intervals of 15 days. The results will be shared with the representatives of the sector and target sectors in the meetings to be held in three different provinces. In the final stage, it will be reported in detail and delivered to UNIDO. ”
SOSİAD supports "World Cooling Day ”
Karakuş stated that SOSİAD supported the World Cooling Day and they were honored that they were the first to celebrate this day in Turkey, he remarked that "Industrial unions and professional organizations from around the world came together to declare June 26 as World Cooling Day and June 26 was considered World Cooling Day. He closed his speech as "World Cooling Day will provide an important opportunity to draw attention to the critical importance of food safety and medicine in all areas of production."
Following the opening speech, SOSİAD Board Member Hayati Can made a presentation titled "Rapidly Rising Vital Importance of Cooling", Project Technical Team Leader Kadir İsa,PhD made a presentation titled "Project Objectives and General Framework" and SOSİAD Board Member / Project Coordinator Kıvanç Aslantaş made a presentation titled "Project Application Details and Expected Results".
Mr.Can has remarked: “The refrigeration sector should aim to create an environmentally friendly life.” Hayati Can talked about the increasing trend of European scale greenhouse gases in his presentation, and stated “
Turkey is in the first rank with 146 percent. Europe in general transforms towards environment friendly solutions. We must be a part of it. However, in the world we live in, our cities struggle with extremely high temperatures. The city centers draw a curve that rises about 5°C above the temperatures measured by the atmosphere or meteorology. The effect this has on our world: extreme high and extreme low temperatures, storms, excessive rainfall and rise in sea levels. When we look at Turkey's urbanization curve, less than about 25 percent of our population were living in urban areas in 1927, now almost 90 percent of our population currently lives in urban areas. Therefore, this change is the main line of change that shows the workload for the people in this sector. Because this change tells us what we should do in the future. ”
Mr.Can, giving information about the effects of food products on human health and the results of his study in 2017, emphasized food safety: “By reducing the reproduction rate of bacteria by cooling, the aim is to keep the harmful toxin substance in the food under a certain rate. Bacterial growth rate can not be stopped, nor can an endless preservation be realized. Turkey Statistical Institute (TSI) does not provide statistical data about food poisoning. The Ministry of Health, on the other hand, only presents death cases under the title of digestive system problems. Although this rate is not very high, in our country approximately 200 thousand people experience poisoning cases and we can say that nearly 10 thousand people lose their lives. The shortage of information sources and the lack of data storage, and the results of investigations not being collected in a single center summarizes the situation regarding food safety.” Can also touched on air pollution; "
The situation is more grave about air pollution. Turkish Thoracic Society publication announced earlier this year that because of air pollution in Turkey, every year 32 thousand people lose their lives and 80 of 81 provinces of our country is polluted according to World Health Organization criteria. We are faced with two facts: Our people are killed by food poisoning and air pollution, air heating and particle emissions. Unfortunately, only 10 percent of Turkey has clean air .
We are faced with a statistic reporting 279 days of Istanbul have polluted air. We create these results. As the cooling sector, some of our goals should be drawn from here. The main issue that the cooling sector should consider is to create a nature-friendly life that constitutes the essence of our Demonstration Project, to establish a safe food chain, to complete all stages of the cold chain for safe food, and to ensure the safe storage of all products entering our kitchen from the field."
İsa: “Demonstration project supports successful use of alternative refrigerants”
After Mr. Can, Kadir İsa,PhD summarized the reasons why the Demonstration Project was needed: "Refrigerants are used in what we call vapor compression mechanical refrigeration cycles, which constitute the majority of the refrigeration systems used all over the world. A significant proportion of these refrigerants have been restricted or completely eliminated by some past regulations. Therefore, the refrigeration sector is in a search. In order to fill this gap, different and alternative refrigerants were used in the sector. This project was originally designed to support efforts to successfully use such alternative refrigerants. It is supported by UNIDO and run by SOSİAD. The Ministry of Environment and Urbanization is another supporter as well. Through this project, some alternative and natural refrigerant systems will be used in approximately 3 provinces. Different measurements will be made on these applications. The results will show how valuable these refrigerants are as an alternative.”
Aslantaş: “We will work in a total of 5 facilities in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir”
Referring to the Demonstration Project's technical details Kivanc Aslantaş, "This project is one of the demonstration projects UNIDO plans to establish in Turkey. Within the scope of this project, we will perform field application of gases that have no impact on global warming and harm to ozone layer. For this purpose, we will work in a total of 5 facilities in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. In these facilities, we will carry out the transformation of the working plants into new systems and also the measurement of the existing plants. Our aim is to provide the most advanced systems in terms of food preservation with refrigerants that have no negative impact on the environment, and to create a system that will not create a disadvantage in terms of investment and operating costs. The project must be completed by the end of the year. We are planning to present the applications during this period to the participants through seminars and thematic meetings at the end of the year. The other components of the awareness raising activities are the works that will be carried out through the sectoral media and the project website, at the SOSİAD stand at the ISK-SODEX fair, which will be held in Istanbul between 2-5 October 2019. During the ISK-SODEX fair, a seminar on F-Gas regulations will be held. During the seminar, some developments related to Real Alternatives 4LIFE project, which SOSİAD is a social partner, will be shared. On the evening of October 4, 2019, a gala dinner will be held with approximately 500 people from different segments of the refrigeration sector”. Aslantaş quoted Henry Ford, "Getting together is just the beginning.
The real success is to be able to work together" and underlined the SOSIAD's belief in unity.
The meeting ended with a cocktail organized after the Q & A session.