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How to cut energy costs by up to 80% using free cooling

For manufacturers based in Northern Europe (and anywhere else where the weather gets chilly in winter), the introduction of free cooling is an absolute no-brainer. Why pay for cooling capacity when you can be getting it for free simply by harnessing the ambient air?

Free cooling can cut energy consumption and costs by up to 80%, helping companies not only to save money, but to also make real progress in becoming more sustainable. Many businesses are under extreme pressure to find ways to reduce carbon emissions and free cooling can provide an effective means of achieving even very stringent environmental goals.

Benefits of Free Cooling
Free Cooling uses the outside air to chill water used in industrial processes. But that’s not all; free cooling can also be used for air-conditioning – or any environment which requires comfort cooling. Free cooling can also help extend the lifetime of other cooling equipment by dissipating heat before it even gets to the chiller, thus reducing the load on mechanical parts

Trane offers a very large portfolio of equipment with free cooling. Trane Rental Services can also provide air-cooled dry coolers that work in tandem with chillers to remove unwanted heat from the system. The biggest drain on any cooling system is the compressor so cutting down on compressor run time – even by a small amount – can significantly reduce the system’s overall energy consumption. The higher the water temperature, the longer the free cooling running time and the higher the savings.
In the Summer, when outside temperatures are too warm to provide free cooling, the dry cooler is bypassed automatically and the existing chilled water system takes over fully.

Harnessing free air
Ambient air is a wholly free resource and free cooling / dry coolers can be beneficial even when there is only a slight difference between the outside air supply and the water return temperatures. This means it can be effective for at least six months of the year in most Northern European countries, helping to deliver enormous savings on cost and energy consumption. In some situations, you can even eliminate the need to run a chiller altogether!

Wide range of sectors and applications
Free cooling is now extensively used across a wide range of sectors, from office buildings, shopping malls and hospitals to data centres, chemical factories and many industrial processes – in fact, any situation where water temperatures typically run above 10°C.

Even when free cooling is not the direct goal, using a dry cooler is often the best solution to deal with excess heat and temperature control of industrial processes.

Rental is also a great solution for emergencies. A Trane customer in the Netherlands was able to keep production going during emergency repairs thanks only to Trane’s rapid response. Trane provided a dry cooler and heat exchanger in just 24 hours to help the factory dissipate excess heat generated during production. Another customer in the Netherlands – a biomass power plant – needed a short-term rental solution to keep production up and running when an expected delivery of boiler equipment failed to materialise.

As well as short-term and emergency rental, Trane Free Cooling is available through Trane’s unique EaaSy “Equipment-as-a-Service” formula. The scheme provides a host of advantages for customers including ongoing maintenance and 24/7 service support.

Read the customer story about free cooling for an automotive components

Read the customer story about heat extraction for a glass manufacturer

Read the customer story about free cooling for a plastics recycling company

Read the customer story about heat extraction for a power plant


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