Corix Cleveland Thermal is modernizing its century-old district energy system with new chiller strategies, upgraded cooling towers and sustainable water management practices. This article explores how the utility optimizes seasonal chilled water production, recovers condensate for cooling tower makeup, and prepares for future growth with a more flexible, energy-efficient cooling infrastructure.
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.
As the Best Practices Magazines celebrate their twentieth anniversary, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the remarkable system efficiency gains achieved since our first issue. We also wanted to give subscribers a peek at what the next decades might bring. To do this, we asked a hand-selected list of original equipment manufacturers, independent compressed air system sales and service companies, manufacturing plants and independent system auditors to share their thoughts, highlighting the changes they’ve seen over the past 20 years, then predicting what the next 20 years will bring.
For 20 years, Chiller & Cooling Best Practices Magazine has published articles focused on helping manufacturers reduce power demand, lower water consumption, and improve the performance of compressed air, cooling, blower and industrial vacuum systems. In this article, we highlight a sampling of those stories across the following industries:
Plastics and Packaging
Food and Beverage
Automotive and Transportation
Cement, Building Materials, and Mining
Metals, Pulp, and Paper
Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, and Research
Wastewater Treatment
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.
A building materials manufacturer solved persistent dust buildup by using a custom chiller designed to operate below the ambient dew point, intentionally creating condensation on process equipment. This case study shows how Delta T Systems integrated ambient dew point sensors and variable speed drive (VSD) technology to optimize chilled water temperature, reduce cleanup time, and improve energy efficiency. The solution delivered measurable maintenance savings and became a scalable model for process cooling and chiller optimization across multiple facilities.
Industrial manufacturers are preparing for the EPA’s 2026 mandate requiring all process cooling systems above –22°F to use refrigerants with a GWP of 700 or lower—a shift echoed by more than a dozen states and driven by global HFC phase-down commitments. This article examines the technical, regulatory and operational challenges of adopting low-GWP refrigerants, including flammability classifications, system redesign requirements, efficiency tradeoffs and the long-term implications for chiller manufacturers and end users.
The event gathered a record number of cooling system providers exhibit, a fact appreciated by the many cooling reps in attendance.
“It’s been beneficial,” said Spencer Kaufman, Sales Engineer, Midwest Machinery. “There are decision-makers and people here who do a lot of design work, not only in our market but all across the country. The conversations we’ve been having have been very deep – often up to 15 minutes. The quality of the conversations has been really good.”
In this article:
Cooling for High-Speed Injection Plastic Molding
Free Cooling Results in Massive Energy Savings
Heat Treating Processes Require Cooling to Prevent Furnace Overheating
Food Processing Cooling Needs Vary by the Specific Process
Chemical Plants Need Ultra-Cold Conditions
The CHS oil refinery in McPherson, KS, is a 550-acre facility that processes 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day, consisting of an even mix of sweet crude oil and sour crude oil. Crude is brought in through pipelines and fractionated into gasoline, diesel and a few other products. The refinery also houses a sulfur plant where it produces a liquid agricultural fertilizer called ATS or ammonium thiosulfate, which uses sulfur removed primarily through a process called hydrotreating.
The Cordia Minneapolis district energy system has evolved since it first went online in 1972 to include one main plant and nine satellite plants providing heating and cooling to over 100 buildings. Those buildings are some of the biggest in the state, including the homes of three professional sports teams (U.S. Bank Stadium, Target Field and Target Center), the Minneapolis Convention Center, the Minnesota Star Tribune printing plant and Augsburg University. The steam and hot water system includes 39,000 feet of piping. The chilled water system includes 24,900 feet of piping and has a cooling capacity of 37,550 tons.
The firm corrected issues with how its customer treated and recirculated its cooled water, adding chemical treatment equipment the plant could use in the future. Treating water is an important parts of maintaining a healthy cooling system. During the firm’s initial evaluation, it was evident the existing equipment had seen the effects of a lack of water treatment while the production line was not in use.
The selection criteria for the hybrid fluid cooler considered year-round temperatures. Summer duty had an entering water temperature of 95°F (35°C) and a leaving water temperature of 85°F (29°C). In winter, the wireless provider could use the fluid cooler for direct free cooling, meaning it could send water directly through the fluid cooler, bypassing the chiller. Entering water temperature was 55°F (13°C) and leaving water temperature was 44°F (7°C).
If we're using sustainability as a broader term, there's waste management, water, carbon, renewable power and more. Those are some of the units now part of the equation we're solving for. It sometimes ends up with a different set of solutions than you would typically end up with if you were only looking at dollars.
Bayer Crop Science runs a 240-acre fertilizer production facility with areas for active ingredient and chemical intermediate production, as well as a high-active herbicide production unit. Among the multiple cooling towers at the facility was a 40-year-old field-erected, three-cell, wooden, crossflow Marley cooling tower used for rejecting heat and providing cooling for multiple processes.
The customers wanted to be able to monitor their system from a control room. They wanted to be able to see the overall view of how the system was running. The bigger thing on the backend – especially for us from an engineering perspective – was being able to do better troubleshooting and helping them without the need to be onsite.
Dry fluid coolers use ambient air to reject heat from hot process fluids running through the unit’s closed-circuit coil heat exchanger. Dry coolers have either flat or V-shaped configurations. Hybrid fluid coolers combine closed-loop dry cooling with evaporative cooling for an efficient design that uses less water. Hybrids can be run in dry mode when the temperature set point can be met by dry cooling alone. Adiabatic coolers are a type of dry cooler that use some water to pre-cool the ambient air used to reject heat from the process fluid.
Day 2 of the Best Practices 2024 EXPO & Conference began with high-level learning sessions. For some attendees, the most important session of the conference was the expert panel on designing compressed air systems compliant with the ASHRAE 90.1 standard, which now includes compressed air systems.
Day 1 of the Best Practices 2024 EXPO & Conference saw the annual event’s highest attendance yet, with a record number of manufacturing plants, distributors and engineering firms. The event started yesterday, October 29th, at the Cobb Galleria in Atlanta, GA, and runs until Thursday.
NPE2024: The Plastics Show took place in Orlando, Florida, May 2024, and Chiller & Cooling Best Practices Magazine and Compressed Air Best Practices® Magazine and were there to cover the highlights. This year’s conference drew over 50,000 registrants, including 15,000 from outside the United States. Filling both buildings of the Orlando Convention Center, the conference included zones dedicated to bottling, recycling and sustainability, material science, advanced manufacturing, mold-making and packaging.
In Spring 2024, Chiller & Cooling Best Practices Magazine interviewed Chuck Honeycutt and Brad Davis from Hoffman & Hoffman to discuss best practices in chiller and cooling tower sales and system design. This article will explore how the company has expanded into new areas during its 75-year history. It will also explore a large cooling tower installation at a Colorado biotech.
