Fluorocarbon On Track to Reduce Cooling Costs 67% with IsoCool System

by | Jul 10, 2012

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After installing energy-efficient inverters and a free cooling system from IsoCool, UK fluoropolymer processor Fluorocarbon expects to reduce its cooling costs by 67 percent, Plant Engineer reports.

If its cost-cutting continues, the payback schedule for the project, funded with a loan from the Carbon Trust and Siemens Financial Services under the Energy Efficiency Financing Scheme, will be less than two years, according to the publication.

Fluorocarbon manufacturers PTFE, polymer-related components, high performance engineering plastics and stock shapes at five facilities across Europe.

Its Hertford, UK factory’s on-site processes including industrial bakeware, molding and screw extrusion. Food and Drink Business reports that the company’s cooling system supports more than 70 percent of the equipment within the polymer factory.

IsoCool retrofitted an RFC air blast cooler (pictured) to the factory’s existing chiller. The RFC cooler works by providing a cooling source during times of the year when the ambient is below the temperature required by the cooling system. Fans in the cooler draw in ambient air and use this to pre-cool the water before it reaches the chiller. This can achieve up to 100 percent direct air cooling, the company says, and has a payback period of one to two-and-a-half years in most cases.

The old cooling system consisted of a single water chiller with a 120kW cooling capacity, and cost just over £20,000 a year to run. But when on-site electricity costs more than doubled, from 7p to 15p per kWh, Fluorocarbon looked to improve its energy efficiency.

Coca-Cola Japan and Fuji Electric Retail Systems in June announced that they have developed a vending machine that can operate without using power for cooling for up to 16 hours per day, reducing daytime energy use by 95 percent.

The same month, PepsiCo begun testing a Cool-n-Save pre-cool system for air conditioning at its bottling facility in Tulsa, Okla. Pepsi expects the system to reduce the bottling facility’s energy use from air conditioning by as much as 30 percent, with an average savings of about 26 percent during peak heat seasons.

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