Airedale chillers cool delegates and save energy

Taking centre stage in a town which was once a favourite spa retreat for the Victorians, the Harrogate International Centre (HIC) is now one of the world’s top conference and exhibition venues. Its 2000-seat auditorium is interlinked with eight exhibition halls and hotel, together offering integrated conference, exhibition and entertainments facilities with diverse cooling load requirements.
Two ozone-depleting, technically obsolete R11 chillers installed when the HIC was opened in the early 1980s were struggling to provide a reliable, comfortable environment for delegates and visitors. Without disrupting the Centre’s normal business operation, HIC design consultants Silcock Leedham worked closely with Airedale to replace the two R11 chillers with two Ultima water cooled (UWC) 1200D chillers. The Ultima chillers were engineered to provide enhanced, energy efficient cooling and to fit into the restricted space of the existing plant room located within the Centre.
Says Bill Leedham of Leeds-based Silcock Leedham: “Rather than rely on a straight ‘like for like’ cooling duty replacement, we carried out a detailed cooling load calculation and analysis to include diversified loads from the auditorium, hotel and exhibition halls to give a realistic ‘dynamic’ cooling duty for the water chiller selections in order to minimise running costs.”
Access limitations necessitated building and structural modifications to the plant room to facilitate removal and installation works. Adds Bill Leedham: “Maintaining cooling throughout installation to ensure the normal, continued business operation of HIC was pivotal to the programming and implementation of the replacement of the water chillers.”
Says Airedale technical support manager Tony Bedard: “Installation was carried out at specific times of the year when capacity requirements were reduced. We specially built and configured the two chillers, saving space wherever possible, so that they would fit into the plant room. By a process of modelling, we ensured they could be manoeuvred through the restricted access and into position. While this was carried out, pipe work had to be diverted and pumps moved to maintain cooling. The project had to be well choreographed.”
Says HIC director Stuart Quin: "The changing needs of our clients and visitors now dictate that we have an up to date and effective method of "comfort cooling" across the HIC complex, which hosts over 300,000 business visitors every year from across the world. The system was introduced with no disruption to our events programme and has delivered the performance required of it.”

Email: marketing@airedale.com