Image: giz / Andreas Döring
This June, 15 technical school instructors from 11 states in Brazil participated in the Cool Training - a training for International Instructors and Experts in Commercial Refrigeration with Natural Refrigerants, at the BFS Training Center, located in the city of Maintal, near Frankfurt, Germany.
This international training was organized under the PBH - Brazilian HCFC Phase-out Programme, coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA), in cooperation with the PROKLIMA programme of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
"We are very happy to be able to welcome the instructors from Brazil to this training. The main purpose of holding the Cool Training here in Germany is to provide a moment of knowledge update for instructors from partner schools on how to operate and maintain natural refrigerants-based systems safely," explains Franziska Schmittner, International Project Manager at GIZ Proklima. "In addition to sharing knowledge about natural refrigerant technologies, we hope that all participating technicians will identify with our overarching goal of building a more sustainable refrigeration and air conditioning sector in line with the Montreal Protocol and the Kigali Amendment," she adds.
German expert
The Cool Training instructor at the German technical training institute BFS is the engineer Reiner Mayers, with renowned experience in the field of refrigeration and air conditioning. "BFS, with three teaching units, is the largest refrigeration school in Europe and one of the best and largest in the world. Here we train professionals to manage projects for the entire German industry, in addition to carrying out the international Cool Trainings", he explains.
According to Mayers, the Cool Training programme, which combines theory and practice, places special emphasis on practical application, allowing participants, who are instructors at their schools of origin, to improve their technical proficiency in a safe and efficient manner and to pass on all this knowledge to their students. In addition to theoretical classes and work in the school's laboratories, which are equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, it also provides technical visits to industries.
GIZ has already conducted face-to-face Cool Trainings at BSF with hundreds of technicians from dozens of countries around the world and has been providing an online Cool Training since 2022., currently available in English, Spanish and French, and soon also in Portuguese. The online course is open for all interested persons and free of charge. Register on www.atingi.org and look for "Cool Training" in the search bar.
Partner schools
This is the second Cool Training held with Brazilian instructors, through the PBH-GIZ PROKLIMA partnership. The first took place in 2019. In this 2023 edition, instructors from the following PBH partner schools participated:
- IFBA - Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Bahia, in Salvador (BA)
- SENAI School, in Taguatinga (DF)
- SESI SENAI Jardim Colorado School in Goiânia (GO)
- CFP SENAI Américo Renê Giannetti, in Belo Horizonte (MG)
- SENAI School Várzea Grande (MT)
- SENAI School, in João Pessoa (PB)
- SENAI School, in Recife (PE)
- ETP - Professional Technical School in Curitiba (PR)
- SENAI School, in Rio de Janeiro (RJ)
- SENAI-CTGAS-ER School, in Natal (RN)
- Escola Senai Oscar Rodrigues Alves, in São Paulo (SP)
