Recent Blog Posts

Fundamentals of Refrigeration: Ton of Refrigeration

March 24th, 2026

Any refrigeration professional must understand the most common unit used in refrigeration, the “ton of refrigeration”. To properly explain what a “ton” is in a refrigeration context, studying refrigeration history is helpful. When the refrigeration vapor compression cycle was first invented, the most common application of a refrigeration system was making blocks of ice. Once […]

Fundamentals of Refrigeration: Pressure/Temperature Relationship

March 17th, 2026

When a substance changes state from a liquid to a vapor, the process occurs at a constant temperature. When this occurs in a refrigeration system, it is said that the refrigerant is “saturated”. For water, experiments have proven that saturation, or boiling, occurs at 212ºF at 14.7 psia, which is atmospheric pressure. However, if someone were […]

Fundamentals of Refrigeration: Saturation, Subcooling, and Superheating

March 10th, 2026

“Saturation” is a term used to describe a substance that is at its boiling point. Water, for example, is said to be saturated when its temperature is 212ºF at sea level. The 212ºF water may be a liquid, a vapor, or a mixture of the two. When a substance is saturated, heat added or removed […]

Fundamentals of Refrigeration: Heat Energy Profile of Water

March 2nd, 2026

To reinforce what is known about the states of matter, it can be helpful to study the heat energy profile of water. The graph below shows heat, measured in BTUs, applied to a pound of water on the horizontal axis and the temperature change of the water on the vertical axis. The values displayed are […]

Fundamentals of Refrigeration: States of Matter

February 24th, 2026

Simply defined, “matter” is anything that takes up space and can be weighed. All physical things are made of matter since physical things have both volume and mass. Technically, there are five states of matter: Solid Liquid Gas Plasma Bose-Einstein condensate Items four and five on that list are not relevant to the study of […]