Industries

At the company’s production plant employees manufacture a complete range of engineered, high-performance polymers. At the heart of the operation are numerous extrusion lines and related equipment that operate 24 hours a day, five days per week to produce and ship as much as five million pounds of high-performance polymer pellets each month. The process of producing pellets begins when the rotating screw on each extruder accepts a carefully calibrated mix of thermoplastic materials, as well as additives, from a hopper and pushes the mixture into the extruder’s barrel.

In recent years, the HVAC industry has enlarged its vision from focusing on equipment efficiency measured in terms of ratings points at specific conditions to include a whole building perspective that uses models of year-long, real-world conditions. Accordingly, energy standards have adopted new rating methods to evaluate equipment efficiency during part-load operation. In Part 1 of this two-part article series we examined how these standards are evolving.

FABTECH is North America’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event. Held at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, FABTECH 2019 closed with a record total of 48,278 attendees from 95 countries. Three massive exhibit halls featuring more than 1,700 exhibitors with more than 500 new products being revealed allowed attendees to see the emerging trends and technologies influencing the future of manufacturing. Attendees also had access to more than 175 educational sessions with 15 technology tracks, expert-led presentations, FABx Tech Talks in the style of TED Talks, even a head-to-head welding tournament. Many booths featured hands-on displays and live product demonstrations.

FABTECH is North America’s largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event. Held at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, FABTECH 2019 closed with a record total of 48,278 attendees from 95 countries. Three massive exhibit halls featuring more than 1,700 exhibitors with more than 500 new products being revealed allowed attendees to see the emerging trends and technologies influencing the future of manufacturing. Attendees also had access to more than 175 educational sessions with 15 technology tracks, expert-led presentations, FABx Tech Talks in the style of TED Talks, even a head-to-head welding tournament. Many booths featured hands-on displays and live product demonstrations.

Among key initiatives at DENSO’s Maryville, Tennessee, facility is the use of an innovative ice-storage system engineered to provide environmentally friendly comfort cooling to employees at the company’s main production facility. The system also allows Plant 101 to reduce cooling costs per ton by 44%, while providing a payback of less than four years. It also resulted in an annual carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction of 18,000 tons.

When a cooling tower supporting the HVAC system at NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln was nearing its expected end of life, the management of the 362-bed hospital in the South Bronx saw an opportunity. The year before, the neighboring community had experienced outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease, and even though the hospital’s cooling towers played no role in those outbreaks, the chance to increase protections against possible future exposures of the bacteria that cause the disease was an important consideration.

Cooling large buildings typically requires the use of air- or water-cooled chillers that produce chilled water, which then cools the air. About 39% of buildings over 100,000 square feet use chilled-water systems employing various refrigeration compressor designs.

One of the biggest challenges brewers such as Coppertail face is maintaining the dedication to their brand’s mission and their loyal following, while expanding their reach and growing market share. That challenge means not compromising on ingredients and utilizing the best equipment available for the fermenting, brightening and packaging of their product. But, for any growing business, reliability, uptime and power costs must be quantified in order to maximize margins to make the business viable.

Snail mail. Rolodexes. Boomboxes. We’ve given up the familiarity of the past for the promise of the future. But is the same happening in the chiller industry? Is the push for lower global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants changing the industry as we know it? In some ways, yes. But, in the United States in particular, the change may be more gradual than it appears at first glance.

The craft brewing industry has exploded over the past several years. According to the Brewers Association, in 2012 there were 2,420 regional craft breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs in the U.S. By 2017 that number had nearly tripled to 6,266. The abundance of craft brewers has led to increased competition for market share among consumers, distributors and bars – leaving little to no room for error in the brewing process.