Sixteen professionals completed the first “Train-the-Trainers” session of the new course “Safe and Efficient Use of CO₂ and R-290 in Commercial Refrigeration Systems”, held from August 18 to 23 at Firjan-SENAI Benfica, Rio de Janeiro. The training took place in a newly inaugurated demonstration lab modeled after a mini supermarket and equipped to work with natural refrigerants CO₂ and R-290.
The initiative is part of the Brazilian HCFC Phase-out Management Plan (PBH), supported by GIZ-PROKLIMA. The course is free of charge and open to professionals in the commercial refrigeration sector.
The training was conducted by two invited instructors: mechanical engineer and PhD Professor Gutenberg da Silva Pereira, a GIZ-PROKLIMA consultant, and Fábio Francisco Ferreira, an electrotechnology technologist with a postgraduate degree in engineering and air conditioning, affiliated with PBH partner school FAPRO-ETP. The course also included technical presentations by Rogério Marson Rodrigues, engineering manager at Eletrofrio.
Three instructors — Daniel Neves, Rafael Gama, and Robson Oliveira — will deliver the PBH course at the SENAI Benfica unit starting August 25. They were joined in the training by eleven instructors from other SENAI-RJ units and two members of the local maintenance team who will oversee the new lab.
The training was also attended by Stefanie von Heinemann, project manager at GIZ-PROKLIMA; Frank Edney Gontijo Amorim and Tatiana Lopes de Oliveira Pereira, environmental analysts from Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change; David Fernando Marcucci Pico from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); and Edgard Soares Pinto Neto from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — both agencies are PBH partners alongside GIZ.