FABTECH 2023, a leading event for metal forming, fabricating, welding, and finishing, successfully wrapped up its four-day run at Chicago's McCormick Place, achieving significant milestones for attendance, exhibitors, and show floor size. The 2023 show floor, spanning an impressive 825,325 square feet across three exhibit halls, featured an extensive showcase of over 1,500 world-class suppliers.

This article will discuss the instrumentation typically found in cooling systems and other plant utility systems, what other instruments and gauges should be used, how the instrumentation should be used, and good maintenance practices for instrumentation.

Evaporative condensers are an efficient and cost-effective heat rejection solution for various applications—food and beverage refrigeration, industrial machinery cooling, and HVAC. The units work by condensing superheated refrigerant vapor inside a coil that is continually sprayed with water.  As the water evaporates, fans reject the heated water vapor to the atmosphere.  By lowering system condensing temperatures, evaporative condensers reduce compressor horsepower requirements, resulting in energy savings of up to 15% when compared to air-cooled systems.

This is a two-part article looking at factors impacting decisions on whether to use air or water-cooled air compressors. It also provides heat recovery guidelines for both situations. Part 2 will provide a review of alternative cooling water system options and their approximate operating costs.