This article shares updates to CTI standards and acceptance test codes, synopsizes the event’s educational curriculum, shares perspectives and highlights firms attending this year’s annual conference for manufacturers, owner-operators and suppliers of heat rejection equipment.

This article examines how a natural refrigerant–based chiller was engineered to meet process cooling demands while minimizing environmental impact. It explores refrigerant selection tradeoffs, system architecture modifications required for flammable refrigerants and key design strategies such as charge reduction, mechanical isolation and safety controls. Engineers will gain practical insight into balancing efficiency, compliance and operational reliability in next-generation cooling systems.

Optimizing chiller lift is critical for improving energy efficiency, enabling heat recovery and meeting higher-temperature heat rejection demands in modern facilities. This article explain how advanced centrifugal compressor designs, variable speed drives and variable geometry diffusers enhance lift control while reducing power consumption. As heat pump applications and water constraints drive demand for higher lift performance, next-generation chiller technologies are redefining efficiency across commercial and industrial cooling systems.

Adiabatic coolers are rapidly gaining ground in plastics processing as manufacturers seek sustainable, energy-efficient alternatives to traditional cooling towers. By operating in dry, adiabatic and free-cooling modes, modern systems engineered by Frigel North America deliver up to 90% water savings, lower energy consumption and improved temperature stability for injection molding, PET, extrusion and thermoforming applications. With reduced maintenance, closed-loop protection and long-term ROI advantages, adiabatic cooling is emerging as the new benchmark for high-performance industrial process cooling.

An automotive fabric products manufacturer, reduced natural gas consumption and carbon emissions by implementing a water source heat pump system that captures waste heat from process cooling operations and converts it into usable heating energy for a large makeup air unit. The project simultaneously lowers cooling demand on the facility’s chilled water plant, demonstrating how industrial manufacturers can leverage heat recovery and electrification technologies to improve energy efficiency and support decarbonization goals.