Following a year-long construction period, BITZER, Flowery Branch, Fla., inaugurated a new 1,500-square-meter international training center in Rottenburg-Ergenzingen, Germany.

Named it the honor of Senator h. c. Peter Schaufler, the long-standing owner of BITZER who recently passed away, the SCHAUFLER Academy will provide seminars, giving participants, including planners, system manufacturers and service staff and operators, the skills needed to deal with today’s day-to-day tasks.

“Refrigeration and air conditioning technology isonce again facing major changes and the challenges that come with them,” says Rainer Große-Kracht, chief technology officer. “Keywords are the F-gas regulation and the ecodesign directive. As a leader in technology, BITZER believes that it has a duty to offer its customers both innovative products and the highest standards of technical support. Thanks to our training, participants will be prepared for the challenges that they will face, and they will be able to practice working with new refrigerants and technology.”

The 3-story, 10-meter-high complex has five rooms for theoretical work and three rooms for practical training, allowing several training sessions to take place at the same time. In fact, three training rooms can be connected to form a large lecture hall, which can accommodate up to 120 people. Moreover, the SCHAUFLER Academy contains office space for the instructors and a canteen with seating for 110 training participants as well as employees at the production facility. With its appealing architectural design, the SCHAUFLER Academy also serves as a new reception building for the production facility at Rottenburg-Ergenzingen, the international competence center for BITZER screw compressors.

“Here, we can not only show off the theoretical advantages of our pioneering technology, but also demonstrate modern compressor and electronic components in action. This opens up the possibility of practical training under real system conditions,” says Volker Stamer, director of the SCHAUFLER Academy.

Heating is provided by efficient heat pumps, underground latent storage (ice storage), a solar thermal collector and a combined heat and power system.

“This concept underlines our commitment to developing products for sustainable energy use and climate protection. As such, the academy allows us to present systems that use BITZER components in a direct way to our customers,” adds Große-Kracht. “The ice storage system collects temporarily available cooling and thermal energy, which can be retrieved when it is required. This enables BITZER to balance the fluctuating energy supply, while also using renewable sources of energy for space heating and cooling.”