Africa’s only dedicated heating, energy, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration trade exhibition FRIGAIR expo will fly in three world-class American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) speakers to present topical short courses during the show.

The first course is ‘Designing and operating high-performing healthcare heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems’ instructed by professional engineering services provider Dewberry Engineers healthcare VP Daniel Koenigshofer. The course details the key elements of high- performing healthcare HVAC systems, including infection control, comfort, reliability, safety, maintenance, energy and flexibility. Operation and maintenance issues are also covered, since engineers are regularly asked to troubleshoot systems they have designed, in Koenigshofer’s experience.

The course includes valuable information on sequences, psychrometrics, and lessons learned on setback of temperature and airflow, as well as how these factors relate to temperature, relative humidity, air exchange, filtration and pressurisation requirements. Design of operating suites, isolation rooms, labs, pharmacies, sterile processing and imaging suites is covered briefly in the final hour.

University of Georgia mechanical engineering degree programme coordinator Tom Lawrence will instruct the ‘Basics of high-performance building design’ course. It focuses on the basic application of relevant ASHRAE resources, such as the ASHRAE Green Guide publication which provides green building guidance from planning to operation, to achieve high-performing building design. The course content should be suitable for architects and engineers.

The final course is ‘Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems: design and application’ instructed by British University in Egypt mechanical engineering lecturer Hesham Safwat. It provides nonmanufacturer- specific concepts of the unique operational characteristics of VRF systems and how to apply VRF systems to a range of building types, in line with the increased use of VRF systems across the world.

The course offers comprehensive VRF system design and application guidance using building-specific scenarios and supplements the fundamental VRF technology information in the 2016 ASHRAE Handbook HVAC Systems and Equipment. Mechanical engineers, design-build contractors, consulting engineers, HVAC system designers and facility engineers can benefit from this course.

FRIGAIR is organised by Specialised Exhibitions Montgomery in partnership with Interact Media Defined and the South African Institute of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning.

The expo takes place in South Africa every three years and this year, it will take place at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand from June 6 to 8.