Chillers

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. 

Using a combination of predictive analysis and historical information helps companies make sound decisions relating to CUP operations. Ever-changing loads, weather and utility prices combine with hundreds of components that all impact energy efficiency. While previous strategies focused on individualized equipment efficiency and automation, CUP optimization considers the complete system. 

A total of 1,875 exhibitors spread across 527,520 square feet, and 120 free educational sessions drew 48,034 total attendees. Driven by decarbonization and green transition megatrends, this event highlighted the global refrigerant transition; adoption of heat pumps; integration of building automation systems and AI; and optimization of the energy/water nexus in applied equipment. This article recaps the response and innovation from manufacturers of chillers, cooling towers and related equipment.  

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) started moving down the pump efficiency path when it began regulating certain commercial and industrial pumps in 2020. This effectively removed the least-energy-efficient pumps from the market—about 25 percent of the total. It is a good start, but real change will not be achieved unless we start replacing the installed base with more efficient pumps. The state revolving fund (SRF) programs have a green set-aside of 10 percent of their funds that must be spent on carbon-reduction initiatives. Most facilities have already identified the bad actors—equipment that often breaks down or requires maintenance.

In late October 2023, professionals from around the world gathered at the Best Practices 2023 EXPO & Conference at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois to source and learn about Sustainble, Safe and Reliable On-Site Utilities Powering Automation including chillers, cooling towers, motors, compressed air, blowers, vacuum, pneumatics and more.

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.

The 2023 AHR Expo co-sponsored by ASHRAE and AHRI was held Feb. 6-9 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, GA. A total of 1,779 exhibitors (425 international) spread across 487,000 square feet, and several dozen free educational sessions drew 42,794 total attendees. HVACR equipment manufacturers and suppliers displayed their latest innovations engineered to address the megatrends in the HVACR industry and market. This report will highlight the cooling tower, chiller/heat pump and associated technology innovation centered around electrification, decarbonization and water conservation.

An Illinois food service products manufacturer now saves nearly 60% of their base annual cooling energy costs through improvements made in three phases over several years. The plant, which has a 1200 ton chilled water plant, implemented upgrades including pump and tower fan VFDs and enhanced function controls, free cooling, and chiller compressor drive retrofits. The revisions built through successive phases to capture further benefits from more complete utilization of the preceding steps’ capabilities.

The Sterling Heights facility, producing jet engines for the U.S. Army, has undergone extensive overhauls and re-tooling in the last decade. In 2010, Stellantis announced it would invest nearly $850 million in a new state-of-the-art paint shop at the SHAP Site, as well as the installation of new machinery, tooling and material-handling equipment. The following year, the company added another $165 million to the investment to build a one million-square-foot body shop. 

In June 1920, Willis Haviland Carrier prepared a memo that described a novel machine and refrigerant that might significantly advance the art and science of air conditioning.  Already celebrated for his 1911 “Rational Psychrometric Formulae,” Carrier imagined a “centrifugal chiller” and new refrigerant that would not only enhance process cooling in factories around the world, but reliably and affordably deliver “comfort air” to the public in theaters, stores, restaurants, sports venues, ships, hospitals and office buildings.