Emerson’s next E360 Forum will be held in Chicago on October 5. Organizers said the forum will provide a platform to discuss some of the industry’s biggest challenges, including the dynamic regulatory climate, the growing technician shortage, and the introduction of new refrigerants.

The complimentary day-long event will open with an update on refrigerant and energy regulations, followed by a panel discussion about designing refrigeration and HVAC systems for foodservice, supermarkets, and cold storage. Following the panel discussion, there will be a session projecting retail and foodservice issues for 2025 and beyond for customers, operators, and facilities, as well as a session on the current technician shortage and planning for the future.

The afternoon will feature breakout sessions focused on four areas: applications, regulations, air conditioning, and industrial refrigeration. Some topics covered include:

• Understanding Applications for Alternative Refrigerants (Applications track) – Jason Prenger, director of refrigeration engineering for Emerson, will explore the capacity and efficiency performance of various lower-GWP A1 refrigerants and review which challenges the new refrigerants pose by compression technology, and offer options to mitigate those challenges.

• Trends in Supermarket Refrigeration Architecture (Regulations track) – Ani Jayanth, director of marketing, foodservice, for Emerson, will highlight several system architectures being utilized in supermarkets, from HFC-based centralized and distributed direct expansion systems to CO₂ booster, secondary, and cascade systems. Jayanth will address the pros and cons of each system, evaluating capacity, performance, serviceability, environmental impacts, and equipment costs.

• HVAC Regulations, Refrigerants and Solutions (Air Conditioning track) – David Hules, director of commercial marketing, air conditioning business, for Emerson, will help clarify uncertainties related to the changing regulatory climate in the commercial HVAC industry, providing an update on the latest regulatory changes and their implications.

• Energy Efficiency and Security: Still Important in a World With Low-cost Fuel (Industrial Refrigeration track) – Vilter Manufacturing’s director of marketing and business development, Tom Hoopes, and district sales manager, Alan Simchick, will explain the basics of combined heat and power cogeneration and combined cooling heat and power, or trigeneration, focusing on the application of these systems with internal combustion engines and gas turbine generators as the primary movers.

For more information on this next E360 Forum, including registration information, go here.