Troy Gladstone, Spencer Kaufman, and host Brian Gomski teach fluid cooler class today. Learn what they are, how they work, and when to use them. Plus, Troy and Spencer share their championship rib recipes.
Full show transcript:
Brian
What’s up, ladies and gentlemen?
Troy
The outtakes.
Brian
What’s up, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Engineering. Tomorrow, your number one podcast for commercial construction HVAC vaccine engineering. Today we are on the road in Kansas City, taking an in-depth look at cooling towers and fluid coolers. What are they? When are they used? And some great applications you may not have thought of. And as a bonus, our guests will be sharing their secret championship recipes, rib recipes, or sit back, relax and prepare for your mind to be blown.
Speaker 3
Broadcasting around the world. This is engineering. Tomorrow, the podcast committed to bringing you the best in commercial construction design and engineering from the brightest minds in the industry. This is the stuff they don’t teach you in school. So sit back, relax, and open your mind. You’re about to get the insider knowledge to improve your next construction project or advance your career.
Speaker 3
This is engineering. Tomorrow.
Brian
Hey, engineering tomorrow, fans. We are here obviously not in our normal studio in a very special location in Kansas City. We have to incredibly special guests and we are glad that you are here today. First, we have Troy Gladstone, president of Midwest Machinery. Today we have Troy Gladstone, president of Midwest Machinery. Cue the applause. And also, Spencer Coffman, one of the smartest and top sales engineers in Kansas City for commercial HVAC.
Brian
How are you guys doing today?
Troy
Wonderful.
Spencer
Fantastic.
Troy
Do we get to do like call out retakes whenever we want because. Nope, you had like four of them.
Brian
The only the guy editing gets to do the retakes.
Spencer
It’s a traveling studio break.
Troy
Since we’re picking on you, can we talk about your shirt for.
Brian
Absolutely.
Troy
So do you know if the shirt is on camera?
Brian
The shirt is on camera.
Troy
Okay. So this is the loudest shirt I’ve ever seen in the HPC industry. It looks like I think it’s geraniums, but I’m not sure. I just want to call attention to that.
Brian
It was when I walked into the Banana Republic outlet. It was on the mannequin and I said, Give me that outfit. So fast forward. Here we are.
Troy
Spencer, what would happen if you showed up to your top engineering firm with that shirt on?
Spencer
They would say, we’re making Mali bases of this.
Troy
All right. Never mind that. That was not what I was expecting.
Spencer
So nothing speaks.
Troy
So can we get that with the Midwest Machinery logo on it, Brian?
Brian
Absolutely. I think a lot of engineers love the new green movement. So this is all right.
Spencer
Speaks confidence. Nothing speaks confidence more than a man wearing a flower shirt.
Troy
Well, this is true.
Brian
Yeah. So, guys, what are we here today?
Troy
Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Um, so last one of the most recent podcasts we did was the epic battle of counter flow cooling towers versus cross flow cooling towers. And that’s where we launched today. Spencer and I were talking and he said, you know, I get a lot of questions about fluid coolers and when should I use fluid coolers versus cooling towers?
Troy
Mm hmm. So it seemed like a good we’re here. Seems like a good topic to bring up. And, uh.
Spencer
And Brian just happened to have three microphones.
Brian
Just in my trunk ready to go. Right, right.
Troy
Right.
Brian
I would like to point out, master.
Spencer
Marketer.
Brian
To anyone listening.
Troy
Your gimbal just flipped out.
Troy
I don’t know if it’s still recording.
Spencer
It did a back flip.
Troy
You know, it was. It’s still recording. Yeah.
Brian
I would like to point out to anyone that is listening in their car or on podcast, we are now on YouTube in video format. So to see our lovely faces and the shirt that I’ve been made fun of wearing, please search for engineering tomorrow on YouTube. With that said, back to cooling towers and food coolers.
Spencer
So Troy, who won the battle cross flow versus counter flow?
Troy
Well, the the final conclusion was that cross flow is the hands down champion.
Spencer
Okay.
Troy
Specifically, an induced draft cross flow cooling tower. And really, it was the it was the best combination of space, ease of maintenance. The you know, with ease of maintenance comes the actual probability that maintenance will be done. Because if it’s not easy to maintain, it won’t be done. And then energy and finally, operation in cold weather, which, you know, almost all of our offices operate in cold weather.
Troy
So it just doesn’t freeze up as much as a counter flow tower. But, you know, cooler flow certainly had its spots specific in very tight footprints. Sometimes to counter flow is the best fit.
Spencer
Right. Under specific tonnage, right? Yep.
Troy
Yep.
Spencer
So cross flow was powerful, applies in food coolers as well. So maybe we can tell the audience the difference between cross flow and counter flow.
Brian
Can I ask a question? What’s a fluid cooler? Oh, I think someone I think we have an audience that may have never used a fluid cooler.
Spencer
We got it. Yeah, we got to define it.
Troy
So maybe even go back a step back and say, what’s a cooling tower? Okay, go for it.
Spencer
You go cooling tower. Go food.
Troy
Cooler. All right. Fair enough. So we’re predominantly talking about products that use water and evaporation as a means of cooling. And, you know, there is no more efficient means to cool BTU of heat than evaporative cooling. Mother Nature has the best, most efficient system. And so many, many, many applications use evaporative cooling. So the simplest form is a cooling tower.
Troy
And when we talk about a cooling tower, we we’ll often describe it as an open circuit cooling tower where we have a process or a chiller, for example, that needs to be cooled. You’ve got a condenser and a chiller or heat pump or you’ve got an air compressor or quench tanks in an industrial facility. Something needs to be cooled and we take that process water.
Troy
We run it over a cooling tower, we’ll say over a cooling tower because we use gravity and cooling towers. And we we drop that water through a fill media. We call it fill pretty creative throw fill media. And we generally pull air across that and we evaporate. And through the power, evaporation will affect usually a 10 to 15 degree temperature drop, all based on the drywall temperature and and humidity or we call it the wet bulb temperature, but we affect a temperature drop in that cooling tower.
Troy
And then that cooler water is then returned to the process or the chiller or the heat pumps or whatever have it. And we call it a cooling tower and we call it open because if you think about what a cooling tower does is it’s pulling in massive amounts of air. And that air comes in contact with the water.
Troy
And we call it an amazing air filter. Yeah, because anything that’s in that air has the potential to be transferred to the circulating water system. So in a cooling tower and I’m rambling, but in a cooling tower, the great value is we do a tremendous amount of cooling for very reasonable first course, but it comes with a downside of having to manage the water treatment, specifically with the contaminants that come into that water and can come in contact with your process or your chiller or whatever have you.
Troy
Yes. So that’s a ten minute or less definition of a cooling tower.
Spencer
Super efficient cooling. Right. Most efficient version. But you’ve got to take care of the water. So.
Troy
Very much.
Spencer
So. Like a pool. Yeah. I’m a southwest Kansas guy. And when I first started my ten year with cooling towers the Best Way.
Troy
Which was at Marley, you were really.
Spencer
Directly for them in the applications department. Shout out to that team. I hope some of them are.
Brian
Listen, rest in peace.
Spencer
Um, the best way is listening to me is okay. It’s 105 degrees in Dodge City, Kansas, but there’s no trees. It’s the desert, right? So you’re out at the farmhouse and you go swimming in the pool and it’s 105 degrees out. And magically, when you get out, mind you, when there’s no trees and it’s a flat deserts, very windy when you get out and you’re covered in pool water into the wind, even though it’s 105 degrees out, dry bulb, you’re magically cold and that is the power of evaporation.
Spencer
So that’s basically a cooling tower on top of your body.
Troy
So so your definition was better than mine.
Spencer
And I did it and probably about it.
Troy
Okay. Oh, yeah, that’s good.
Spencer
Right. Jacqui asked you to define cooling tower because now food cooler so much easier.
Troy
You. You took advantage of my long winded ness.
Spencer
Yeah. So all a fluid cooler does is take that water that you’re you’re trying to cool that process water and take it from an open loop system like you would have on a cooling tower and put it inside of a coil so that it’s a now a closed loop closed loop system. So you’re not worried about the outside and contaminate it.
Spencer
There’s a few different ways to do fluid coolers, right? There’s you can do a dry cooler to where you have the process water you’re trying to cool going through the coil, but you don’t have a separate loop spraying water over the quality.
Troy
So it’d be non evaporative.
Spencer
Non evaporative. That’s the least efficient way to dry coolers. Call it dry cooler. Yep. So you just using a fan to pull or push air across.
Troy
Basically a radius.
Spencer
It’s a radiator for your car use of in fact. Exactly. Or industrial whatever. So that’s one way. And then you can add water to it. There’s some other more advanced stuff like idiomatic and such. But we just hop over to the evaporative side where now you have a separate open loop going over your fluid cooler coil to cool that coil down and use the power of evaporation and cool that process water down.
Spencer
So the water connected to your condensers or your process is protected from the elements, but you have a smaller, much more manageable open loop system taking the heat off of the coil.
Troy
And, you know, a good point there is that that doesn’t necessarily have to be water either inside the coil on the process side, it could be a water glycol mixture so that we don’t have to worry about freezing. It could be a process related liquid, could even be refrigerant where we would have what we call an evaporative condenser.
Troy
You.
Spencer
Yeah.
Troy
That’s really the only point I had. So you’re looking at me like I have to keep talking.
Spencer
So you take that back. What was the original question? I think it was difference between crossbow and counter flow.
Troy
Right? So, yeah, it’s it’s essentially we’ve taken a cooling tower. I always like to use the analogy of we’ve taken a cooling tower and added a heat area, heat exchanger in there. And so when you think about it in those terms, as we’ve now separated the atmosphere from the process load with a heat exchanger and that creates a little bit of inefficiency.
Troy
So there if we’re talking about cooling tower versus flue cooler, I say we already have our first advantage for the cooling tower, which is we’re not adding a layer of heat transfer. Correct. You tracking with me? Yeah. Okay. So what does that mean? You know, with cooling tower direct contact, direct evaporation, sensible intake and cooling? Well, the fluid cooler, we’ve now added this coil and we’ll probably talk about materials of construction for that coil and a little bit, which is really important.
Brian
Are you using heat exchanger and coil interchangeably?
Troy
Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, so it’s an air to water heat exchanger sometimes with our hybrid fluid coolers. It’s it’s a it’s a air to air essentially heat exchanger. We’re not using water. So I just misspeak. Edit that out.
Spencer
No, because that could happen to you when you’re running dry. Yes. The reason I think you almost misspoke is because it’s.
Troy
Not air to air.
Spencer
So many different ways you can do it. And hopefully we can tackle a lot of those on this podcast.
Troy
Yep.
Spencer
But I do want to go back to CrossFit verse counsel, because I think a lot of people hear CrossFit class work cross. I know I need CrossFit, but what’s the difference we encounter from CrossFit? So all that is, is the interaction, the air and the water. So if you think about a cooling tower, you have water falling down right across the fill.
Spencer
That’s really the heat transfer media. And then on a cross flow, you have the what I’m trying for those watching is easy.
Troy
I’m totally open to visual aid in here.
Spencer
I’m doing spirit fields. So you have the water trickling down and then on a cross flow, the air is coming across the water and that’s called a cross flow.
Troy
So the air is coming in from the side?
Spencer
Yes, from the side. If you have a counter flow, the water still falling down. Right. Gravity, Earth, that kind of stuff. But the air comes in up under and turns up and comes from the bottom and it goes counter to the following water. So that’s the main difference. But that really doesn’t define why one is better than the other.
Spencer
It’s just the natural, the way the design is, the way you designed the cooling tower and or food cooler in such a manner, so you get the counter or cross flow air to water interaction is what gives you the other design aspects of that of that cooling tower or food cooler we’re going to get into across the food coolers and counter for food cause that’s why I really thought we should take them into.
Spencer
Yeah.
Troy
So it might be good if you’re interested in learning more about the difference between kind of flow and cross flow in context of what we’re talking about today, to go back and watch that podcast, because most of the same arguments for or against one or the other apply here as well.
Spencer
Yeah, absolutely.
Troy
All right. What’s next? Host I’m asking you what’s next? Because you’re staring at the whiteboard.
Brian
It’s that simple, huh?
Spencer
Yeah, it’s that obvious. I mean, okay, so we talked about the differences between a cooling down and fluid cooler. We have we think we’ve defined an open circuit well enough versus closed circuit.
Troy
I think so. With or without a heat exchanger. Yeah.
Spencer
So now when you talk about when we use a fluid cooler versus when we use a cooling tower.
Troy
Sure.
Brian
That’s the age old question, isn’t it?
Spencer
Says the man in the flowered chair.
Troy
Right. I’ll throw out a reason in process related situations, you know. So when we talk about process, we’re talking about not H VAC, not air conditioning. So in process related conditions will often be at a facility that in addition to being an industrial facility, that by nature sometimes are dirty, sometimes they’ve got contaminants in the area. We do a lot of corn sweetener processing facilities and those plants are literally installed in the middle of a cornfield and we they have an application, maybe it’s an air compressor load that needs cooling.
Troy
And if we put a cooling tower in there, just the amount of organic compounds that through their process and through just being in the middle of a cornfield, it sees leads to just an unacceptable level of water treatment that’s needed. So oftentimes in industrial processes, we’ll put a fluid cooler in which allows us to separate their process load or the small heat exchanger jackets and air compressors from all of that ambient dirt and process dirt.
Troy
And then we’re able to really treat the the spray side of the fluid cooler with a more aggressive chemicals or physical filtration. So that’s my first reason to use a fluid cooler. And I took the easiest one.
Spencer
Yeah, I think the that’s industrial. So then you hop over to the HVAC. Now you’re talking about, okay, where would you put a fluid cooler.
Troy
Where do you see it most?
Spencer
And in 99% of my fluid cooler application and it’s going to be in a water source heat pump application. So you see this a lot for school districts, some retail stores even switching that way. That’s not as common, but.
Troy
It’s some government buildings. You know, sometimes you’ll see bank buildings. So, you know, typically you’ll see water source or geothermal or hybrid, which we’ll probably get into.
Spencer
Yeah, we definitely.
Troy
In end users who are owners and operators with a long term perspective because it can be a little bit more of an upfront cost compared to a cheap package rooftop system. But the payback is there in terms of the energy supply.
Spencer
It’s all back to you. Get what you pay for, right?
Brian
It’s on the heat pump side. They’re doing that because they don’t want the contaminants in within flowing through the loop.
Troy
So maybe step back and quickly give a 30,000 foot elevation of a lot of water source, heat pump system looks like and maybe even a geothermal.
Spencer
Absolutely. I’ll do my best. You fill in where I miss. And I think we even referenced back we have a heat pump podcast to do so maybe you can link that up and provide that as context. But in general, you’ll you’ll use a heat pump system and you’ll have individual terminal units in a certain space.
Troy
Like in a classroom or a hotel room or condo.
Spencer
Yep. You could put them as small as a hotel room or as big as the main, um.
Troy
Concrete area.
Spencer
Yeah. Cafeteria. Yeah. So, but what you do is you have the compressor and the refrigerant circuit at that unit. So whether it’s in heating or cooling, you have the versatility to pick which mode you need to be in at that space and not you’re not subject to be in the mode that the rest of the building is in.
Spencer
So that’s that’s the main right, in my opinion, benefit of it. Yeah.
Troy
So the key feature of a heat pump is we, you know, I always love to talk about we are pumping heat throughout the building. Yeah. And each of those thermal units has a reversing valve in it that allows the heat exchanger in that heat pump to either act as the evaporator condenser. And so we’re moving heat from the classroom or we’re pumping heat into the classroom.
Troy
And then that heat gets dumped into a circulating loop that travels throughout the building. And then that circulating loop needs to maintain a relatively consistent temperature. And we either, depending on the time of the year, we either have to supplement only heat that loop. Mm. Or more often we have to cool that loop.
Spencer
Yeah. Or if you’re really lucky it bounces each other.
Troy
Out, it balances each other out, but it never balances itself out over the long run. So yeah, there are times and now we’re really getting into the weeds of a water source, heat pump system, our geothermal heat pump system, where you can have a large portion of the building providing heat to a portion of the building that needs heat and vice versa.
Troy
And that’s that’s the perfect balance. And that’s why heat pump systems are so efficient, because we move heat from, let’s say, in the afternoon, the west side of a building. We move the heat out of there to maybe some areas in the building that are cool, that need some heat. Yeah, but that doesn’t happen very often. But what I was really talking about when why would we need in a water source heat pump system, why would we need to add a cooling tower or a boiler?
Troy
It’s because in the wintertime, fluid cooler.
Spencer
Preferably.
Troy
Yeah. Thank you. Well, that’s why we haven’t discussed why we would put a tower versus a food cooler and so maybe leads right to that. So why would we put a food cooler in a water source heat pump system?
Spencer
Yeah. It goes right back to Troy and I defining closed loop versus open loop and a cooling tower versus a fluid cooler. When you have, say, a hundred heat pumps in a building, each little heat pump has its own refrigeration cycle, its own compressor. So the last thing you want to do is subject the outside environment and ambient conditions to all of those little compressors.
Troy
Right? Yeah.
Spencer
And you start replacing compressors and heat pump components.
Troy
Yeah. Because you clog that, that coaxial heat exchanger where we’ve got water on one side, refrigerant on the other side, and as soon as we lose water flow because of a clog. Yeah. Which could have been, I mean, gosh, it could be anything. You know, usually it’s just an abundance of dirt and then an abundance of minerals that builds up to create scale.
Spencer
Yeah.
Troy
And if those aren’t managed, then you, you, you’ve got to, you foul those heat exchanger surfaces. So it’s not always even that you clog it so it doesn’t work. It’s just that we layer up those heat exchangers surfaces with calcium or scale or dirt or bio slime, and we lose efficiency throughout the whole building. So putting in a fluid cooler separates that so that the water going through those heat exchangers or the water glycol mixture is pure and clean and you never have to worry about it.
Spencer
Yeah, and back to our definition of water source heat pump. That means a heat pump connected to a water loop.
Troy
Yep.
Spencer
So you’re rejecting the heat that if your building is in that cooling mode, you’re taking that net heat that you need to reject. It’s dumping it from the heat pumps to the water loop. That water loop is connected to your fluid cooler coil. And then that fluid cooler rejects that heat to the atmosphere.
Troy
Exactly. Yep. Super efficient. So it’s all I mean, there’s a lot of debates on the most efficient system, whether it’s is there bull talk, a lot of folks and there’s a lot of evidence out there that say on a given project, the water source or specifically the geothermal heat pump system is still the gold standard for efficient.
Spencer
Sure, that that probably is the gold standard but we have capital constraints usually. So Troy, we didn’t even plan this.
Troy
Oh.
Spencer
How do you save capital costs when you want the efficiency of a geothermal system, but you can afford it?
Troy
Oh, great question. One of my favorite systems is a hybrid geothermal system. So to go back, we talked about what a water source heat pump system looks like. If we talk about, you know, when people think of heat pumps, they traditionally think of geothermal heat pumps where instead of having the fluid cooler or and or a boiler to add heat in the wintertime, we take that loop down sometimes hundreds or thousands of feet into the earth where we have this wonderful battery of mass called the Earth’s core that keeps a very consistent temperature.
Troy
So we therefore use the Earth as our heat sink or our heat source or heat source. And it’s wonderfully efficient. Yeah, but it’s also wonderfully expensive. And so you’ll see a lot of sometimes utility rebates for geothermal systems, federal rebates. There’s there’s oftentimes a lot of incentives to go with geothermal. But even with those, sometimes the first cost is too much for somebody to swallow.
Troy
So what we love working on is these hybrid systems where you take a school in, you know, rural Missouri. Well, in Missouri.
Spencer
Kansas City.
Troy
You know, so whether it be Kansas City or Saint Louis, where, you know, when our design is somewhere around zero degrees Fahrenheit and summer design is staying near 100 degrees Fahrenheit with very high wet bulb in those applications. You know, the the engineer is going to calculate your heat gain and heat loss of the building and your winter design and your summer design and if you’re doing a 100% geothermal system, you have to put in the well system to accommodate which of those is greater.
Troy
And in our markets, all the markets that we serve, it’s it’s always cooling. So cooling drives the size of the well. Well, so if we want to have geothermal and get incentives but also want to save some significant upfront costs, what we can do is instead of sizing that well for the for the cooling load, let’s size it for the heating load, which then allows us to get rid of our supplemental heat system and then whatever that well that can handle the heating loads ability is too cool.
Troy
We pick up the rest of that with a fluid cooler. Yeah. And those are awesome systems because it gives you the assurance of being able to, you know, handle load on the hardest part of the day. But the grand bulk of the time that geothermal well is able to handle 100% of load and you save a ton of money because it’s a much smaller well and you’ve gotten rid of a boiler system.
Spencer
Which is incredibly important because a lot of these systems are serving rural markets and these rural communities don’t have the money to to dump and to afford geothermal system.
Troy
But it’s so important for them to have an efficient system because the power grid sometimes can’t yeah. Supply the demand. So you’re kind of stuck in this mix of an energy company offering some pretty awesome rebates so that they don’t have to increase their capacity. But you can’t afford to put in the system that they’re trying to rebate.
Spencer
I think that’s the Willy Wonka golden ticket.
Troy
It is, yeah.
Spencer
You can send thank you notes to Midwest Machinery. Yeah. Lenexa, Kansas.
Troy
Yeah. So it’s an awesome system and just a fantastic application for Flue Cooler.
Spencer
Yeah. So those are really the main two. I mean, basically the theme is isolating the components in your system from the outside of ambient, you can also use it in water cooled V.
Troy
RF Yeah, that’s another well this is where that whole debate of which system is more efficient. Boy, it’s tough to argue with the water cooled versus.
Spencer
An efficient system.
Troy
Super efficient. Pretty expensive. Mm. You know, V rf is not the least expensive. We do sell it, but it’s not the least expensive, but it’s a very efficient system. Why would you, Spencer, say some people choose a v RF system over a water source, heat pump system?
Spencer
Gosh, I don’t I don’t know if I’m the person that can fully answer that, but if I was to pick v rf over water source, are you saying water cooled v rf or air cooled, very.
Troy
Traditional air cooled thereof?
Spencer
Well, I think you can pack more punch of energy in and refrigerant than you can water. So that’s one thing I think about as an engineer. You’ve kind of put me on the spot here. The other thing is you get maybe get more control.
Troy
You call it a friend.
Spencer
Yeah. Is your phone a friend? Yeah. Yeah. Correction disclaimer we do not sell the RF in the Kansas City market.
Troy
Well, we do. In other markets.
Spencer
In other markets, yeah.
Troy
Yeah. Midwest, Michigan has a big footprint. Sorry.
Spencer
So can you. Can you bail me out?
Troy
Yeah, I’ll bail you out. So I think one of the largest reasons that people have in many scenarios moved from water source heat pump to air cooled v rf is fear of water treatment. And I’d have a lot of arguments against that because I’m, you know, at my core, you’re still a water cooled person. And I just think that it’s tough to overcome the benefits of Mother Nature gives us.
Troy
But I think a big issue is they have this fear of water treatment. So sales people have been able to, you know, keep on that fear and say, well, let’s get rid of that water problem and give you a air cooled RF system that has, you know, X, Y and Z benefits. So we’re not here to debate that right now.
Spencer
That’s a different point.
Troy
But it is a good debate.
Spencer
I won’t be the guest on that part.
Troy
All right. Sounds good.
Spencer
Well, to salvage myself, I asked. I had that thought, but then I said air cooler. Water cooler. B RF And you said either so thinking, oh.
Troy
I thought.
Spencer
Maybe that’s not the answer teachers are looking for.
Troy
But it’s a good point, though, that that fear of water cooled is actually going away because people are still seeking more energy saving. So that’s why we’re seeing a very big increase towards water cooled, very safe, which we do indoors.
Spencer
Yes. And there’s a lot of benefits of air cooled versions of air cooled. Yeah. But that’s a different podcast.
Troy
It is.
Spencer
So we covered everything. Basically, most of the applications, at least from a high.
Brian
Level, went back to geothermal. The hybrid system seems like it makes sense. Can you talk about on rare occasions when a existing loop suffers from hot loop?
Troy
Oh yeah, that’s a great one. You want it?
Spencer
Yeah. I’ll take a little bit and you can elaborate. So, um, Joy, can the term of geothermal remediation, which I think is fantastic, I don’t.
Troy
Think I can that I heard it somewhere.
Spencer
Okay, well, you stole it from somewhere and I’m stealing it from you more. Recycle it. So basically you’re taking a fully geothermal system that is in in, um, in some trouble and you’re adding a supplemental fluid cooler to it to get that wellfield back into a more stable condition.
Troy
Um, and it gets in trouble sometimes. The, the wells weren’t properly designed, meaning the well itself isn’t big enough to handle the load. And over time you have to think about that geothermal mass as a battery that charges and discharges. And sometimes we charge that battery with so much heat over the years that it just cannot keep up.
Troy
And that’s when will sometimes put in a supplemental fluid cooler. And we like water cooled in that instance. We have very simple water treatment and water maintenance program so that it’s almost turnkey, but that rescues a lot of school districts who are having cooling problems. And, you know, a lot of people are looking to get rid of their geothermal heat pump systems and replace it with either really junky air cooled Pentax or, you know, ventilators that are energy hogs when all they really need is a helper for their geothermal loop.
Brian
Have you ever heard of a has a do you know if loops can ever recover or is it permanently considered a hot loop?
Troy
Oh no, that’s exactly what we’re doing. That’s why we put the fluid cooler in there to recover that loop. So it does a couple people get really fancy with the controls and there’s good reason to. So sometimes it’s, you know, they’ll run the fluid cooler at night.
Spencer
Yeah.
Troy
To think of it as a battery to discharge that battery, sometimes they run it at peak or off peak times because energy might be cheaper at 2:00 in the morning than it is at 5 p.m.. So there’s all kinds of different strategies you can use to recover that loop.
Spencer
Yeah. And even in hot climates, um, not only is energy cheaper at 2 a.m., but the, the, the, the wet bulb.
Troy
Deli.
Spencer
Temperature is a lot lower, so you get a lot more efficient cooling so you can reject way more heat out of that loop. Yeah. At night than you could during the heat of the day. So if you’re clever.
Troy
Yes.
Spencer
And you size it right. You can save yourself a lot of money.
Troy
Yeah. So, so and this is where you get really nerdy in the controls. It’s not so much that you’re running that fluid cooler in the hottest part of the day when there’s the most demand, it’s if we’re really smart, we’re trying to run that fluid cooler at the smartest time of the day to discharge that Earth battery so that it can then pick up more heat in the peak of the day.
Spencer
You know.
Troy
Those are really geeky conversations that I think are awesome, actually.
Spencer
Yeah, that’s what makes the job fun sometimes.
Brian
Are you putting the food cooler before or after the loop.
Spencer
That it’s the same?
Brian
It’s the doesn’t matter.
Troy
Yeah.
Spencer
It’s in the loop and it’s a loop.
Brian
Yeah So then you’re running bypass then during the day after blue.
Troy
No it’s just literally in the loop. I mean. Yeah. So because.
Brian
You said you were going to run it at night, so I wasn’t sure if then you’re bypassing it during the day.
Spencer
Or we could run through the coil and just not turn the fan on, or you could bypass the coil right in the day.
Troy
The probably the greatest energy saver would be that you would have almost like a primary pump on your fluid cooler. So you’re injecting into that loop, into the circulating loop. That way when we’re not using the fluid cooler, we’re not pushing the full loop water through a smaller, higher pressure heat exchanger. So we’re saving pressure drop when we’re not utilizing fluid cooler.
Spencer
Which means you can slow the pump.
Troy
Down.
Spencer
Yeah. Yep.
Troy
Well, yeah, there is that. There’s a whole nother variable primary conversation that we need to have a podcast on. Yeah.
Spencer
Are you writing out Mr. Host, are you writing all these podcasts. It there’s actually two while we’re in applications, there’s, there’s literally two specific jobs I’m working on right now. Well, there’s more than that in terms of heat pumps.
Troy
But I really you need to work on more than two this time.
Spencer
There’s two that I’m working on today and yesterday that I really want to bring up in terms of application. And and the first is the geothermal remediation. That’s huge. There’s a government building, I won’t say we’re not sure if they’ll come and get me and put me in a car. Not, um, where they’re, they’re well field is putting temps back to the heat pumps at like 110 degrees or something.
Spencer
That’s hot. So hot. Not really a great.
Troy
It’s not ideal you can actually cool with that. But your, your efficiency of the units has dropped.
Spencer
Yeah. How would you say your life span of your career.
Troy
Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s like run in your car at 4000 rpm all the time.
Spencer
You could do it, but you’re going to have some problems down the road.
Troy
Yeah.
Spencer
Um, and it’s not as efficient. So they came to us with that problem. How can we help someone else is trying to tell us we should put chillers in, switch out the system, change it up. And I’m saying, how about we start with a remediation first, see where that gets you. And they’re going to do exactly what we talked about.
Spencer
They’re going to have a main primary loop serving the the well and then we’ll just have a secondary loop pulling off that and injecting back into that. So that’s the first one. Another one is is new heat pump systems, but they’re being sized for dry coolers, dry fluid, cooler. So remember, audience dry fluid cooler means you don’t have that second loop to use the power of.
Troy
No spray pump, no base, and it’s a radiator.
Spencer
It’s a radiator. So now they’re not even doing it on accident. They’re purposely designing for 110 degree loop temps. And the reason those loop temps have to be higher is because on a dry fluid cooler, you’re cooling to the dry bulb and not the wet bulb. Drabble was always going to be higher than the wet bulb in a cooling scenario.
Spencer
So I’m saying, okay, if you want to maximize the efficiency of your heat pump system, let’s check out an evaporative fluid cooler. And now you can get your loop. Temps down to 95, 85 or something a little more manageable. And your your heat pumps are going to operate so much more efficiently and last longer. So those are literally to job those working off before this podcast, I was like, I really got to talk about those perfect application example.
Troy
And maybe a good segue into some types of fluid coolers.
Spencer
Yes.
Troy
In that particular situation might be a type to use a hybrid fluid cooler.
Spencer
Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Troy
Okay. So explain with a hybrid flu cooler is.
Spencer
So hybrid fluid cooler is um, just to re summarize, you have a dry cooler with no circulating loop and then you have a evaporative fluid cooler which has your coil, but then a circulating loop spraying over that coil, rejecting heat, using the power evaporation so that that’s your, your evaporative fluid cooler. But you even go deeper into the weeds on your evaporative fluid cooler.
Spencer
You can have a hybrid fluid cooler. So basically what you’re doing is you’re introducing some fill media like you would see in a cooling tower into the open loop of the food cooler. So you have the closed loops going through the coil back to your load and then you have the open loop, right? That’s brain over the coil.
Spencer
So what you do is you take that hot water that’s just gone over the coil and taken all that heat from the process. You pump it back to the top of the fluid cooler and then it goes into a gravity distribution system and then sprays over fill just like you would in a cooling tower. So it’s like you’re putting a miniature cooling tower inside your fluid cooler.
Troy
So if we were to put an image up on the screen, what model, Marley, are we talking about?
Spencer
Two fantastic models. So I’m actually working on more than two or heat pump jobs and I’m one of those applications, a smaller tonnage we would use like the LW go. Um it’s, it’s a counter flow hybrid fluid cooler, uh, it has direct drive fans plug and pull, plug and play controls all that jazz we can dove into motors.
Spencer
Yeah. ECM Or you can get them with just the standard well drive.
Troy
Yeah traditionally ECM motors but now in our.
Spencer
Supply.
Troy
Shortage. Yeah. Yeah.
Spencer
So that’s the on the other jobs we’re working, it’s going to be the what we call the MH F and I and that’s a, that’s a cross flow fluid cooler. So that goes back to why we want to define.
Troy
Counter.
Spencer
Flavors cross so there’s inherent advantages and disadvantages to each but the MH is going to be for your larger tonnage. Yeah. And I like to use what we call the MH F element, which I think Segways into coil material choice.
Troy
All right, perfect.
Spencer
Um, I just, I like image of element because it’s a copper coil, so maybe you can elaborate on the three choices and why.
Troy
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. If you go back to thinking about these fluid coolers were predominantly talking about evaporative fluid coolers. And when we take water that comes from a spigot, we call it city water. Is that water perfectly pure dispenser? No, no. It has hardness in it. Right. Because, you know, the water that we’re drinking has hardness in it.
Troy
Calcium, you know, magnesium, all kinds of different elements. And and but the problem is, whether it’s a cooling tower or an evaporative fluid cooler is when we evaporate water either on fill material in a cooling tower or coil surface in a fluid cooler. Those that mineral content, those dissolved solids, any of that hardness stays behind. And so when that hardness stays behind, especially in fluid coolers, it often adheres to that coil, you know, the hottest place in the vessel.
Troy
So it’s really important to think about materials of construction, and you have to balance first costs versus maintenance costs and efficiency. So if we start on the lower end of the spectrum and we’re talking about first cost, we have a steel coil that is galvanized. Yep, that is by far the least expensive coil material you can get. Mm.
Troy
And the very best day of its life is day one. And from that point going forward you will lose efficiency diminishing. We’re 100% sure that you will lose efficiency after day one. And why? Because we’re just constantly evaporating on that coil. And the zinc is ultimately a sacrificial coating, you know, so it has a limited life expectancy. Once we lose that zinc coating, then we replace it with iron oxide.
Spencer
Is it true.
Troy
Rust?
Spencer
If you don’t use it, you lose it.
Troy
Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so with a galvanized coil, it’s the least expensive coil to put into a cooling tower. That’s pretty good heat transfer. Yeah. Um, but so if you don’t perfectly treat that spray water that’s in a fluid cooler, you stand a high probability of scaling up that coil. Mm. And so when that happens, let’s assume we have a less than stellar water treatment program in place.
Troy
When that happens, what does that less than stellar water treatment company do to take care of a fluid, cooler cooling tower that is scaled up?
Spencer
Well, first I have to say, if you have a good water treater, pay them higher than what they deserve and keep. Don’t let them leave.
Troy
Oh, yeah, for sure. Yes.
Spencer
The first thing you’re going to do is blame the manufacturer. Yeah.
Troy
Always. That is 100% the case. Bad metal.
Spencer
Yeah. The second thing they’re going to do is dump it with acid. Yeah.
Troy
Because acid is cheap. So they’re going to start loading up the tower with acid. And that does an amazing job of combating the scale. So it cleans up the coils, cleans up the water, and it strips the zinc off. And so as soon as we start.
Spencer
You didn’t tell me that, right?
Troy
Yeah. So then we’ve created a big problem. We’ve, we’ve created a situation where we’ve get into the weeds here, but in a galvanized steel surface there’s a process called passive action, which creates a protective layer basically in the beginning of its life. We keep the parts extremely neutral for a period of time, and that allows a protective layer to form on that galvanized surface, I think is it zinc, carbonate.
Spencer
Something like.
Troy
That? I think it’s zinc carbonate layer and so that creates a surface that protects the zinc, which protects the steel. Well, as soon as we start hitting those surfaces with acid, we lose that zinc carbonate layer. And then the actual zinc becomes a sacrificial.
Spencer
Not good, not good.
Troy
And then you have to replace the coils and replacing the coils on a fluid cooler. We love those calls because they’re very expensive. No, actually, we don’t like the calls because it means that, you know, a customer of ours is dealing with a really difficult situation. But so, long story short, galvanized coils, cheap, decent heat transfer, but very subject to miscalculations on whether chemistry and they have a limited life expectancy and they’re very expensive to replace.
Spencer
Especially if you’re draining the coil in the wintertime.
Troy
Oh, yeah, will do.
Brian
Yeah. Is there any type of aftermarket coating?
Troy
Well, the inside of the coils, not zinc coated. Sure. So it’s just carbon steel. So when we drain it, like you referenced there, Spencer, sorry to interrupt you. We’ve now dried it out. So now we had wet and now we’re adding oxygen. Not good, which is a recipe for rust.
Spencer
Yeah.
Troy
So big problem.
Spencer
So you either need to add glycol to your to your coil loop or yes. Get a different.
Troy
If I had a galvanized steel fluid cooler, I would do everything I could to make sure that it has galvanized or that it’s using glycol in there for freeze protection and for corrosion resistance, which is more expensive. Go ahead, Ryan. You had a.
Brian
Question. Have you have there ever been a product solution for an aftermarket coating once the zinc has worn off.
Troy
Or not really, no. You’re going to spend more money pulling that coil section out, having it, you know, mechanically clean and then recoded with zinc. You just going to replace the cord?
Spencer
Very feasible. No. So all those things lead you to their stainless steel coils or skip that for time.
Troy
Do you want that stainless real quick.
Spencer
You had and then we’ll talk copper.
Troy
Stainless steel coils are available in a fluid cooler market and we offer them hourly offers them. I think the other competitors do too.
Spencer
And resistance.
Troy
Obviously, superior corrosion resistance. You cannot I mean it’s it’s impervious to most chemical treatment mistakes. It doesn’t have as good of a heat transfer as the galvanized steel. And it’s nowhere close to the heat transfer of copper, which you already alluded to before. Is your hands down favorite pick. Stainless steel is also the most expensive.
Spencer
Yeah. Bu yeah. And it supports the Russian.
Troy
So if we want a corrosion resistant material, chemically resistant material and the best heat transfer and we don’t want to spend as much on stainless, we choose copper. Exactly.
Spencer
And sometimes the copper coil can be so much more thermal efficient it’ll put you to a smaller block size.
Troy
Yeah. And sometimes lower pressure drop and. Yep.
Spencer
So sometimes it actually the coil itself is more but the overall price of the equipment is less.
Troy
Yeah, this kind of reminds me of when we did a kind of flow versus cross flow competition and we said, All right, hands down, winner is the cross flow cooling tower for all of these reasons. But there’s a place for a counter flow tower. Sure. Hands down, winner for materials of construction in a fluid cooler.
Spencer
Copper. Yeah.
Troy
Copper, copper, copper, copper. What’s the only reason that we would not. This is maybe a trick question that we would not supply or that we would not recommend a copper coil or fluid cooler.
Spencer
If the lead time. No.
Troy
Yeah. All right. All right. Two good reasons. Number one, if the lead time doesn’t permit it. And number two is if Marly hasn’t developed that product yet, because I was going to say not every flue cooler that they have is copper capable, is that correct?
Spencer
I think they’re getting pretty close to having most of them. There is a there is a non-hybrid fluid cooler that we have a counter flow standard, not a hybrid. The d t which they don’t have copper. Okay. But they do have the elliptical fender coil. So you get more efficient with the fins.
Troy
But wait, Spencer but wait. I can’t specify a copper fluid cooler because not everybody else does it. It’s not fair to everybody else. How do we deal with that?
Spencer
Life is not fair. No, actually, we had a project where this exact thing happened, and we’re always honest with our engineers. We play the long game, right? So in that scenario, I just explained all the benefits of the copper and I flat told them my competitor could not do this. But here’s what you can allow for them and we I advise they allow stainless steel for the competitor right that gives you the corrosion resistance is really in that case was the main reason we were doing it.
Spencer
Yep.
Troy
So and why are we fine. Recommending stainless as an option. Because it’s more expensive. Well, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Yeah. I mean I think we’re being I think we’re maintaining integrity there, we should say.
Spencer
Punished for having better.
Troy
Product. Yeah, it’s a better product and it’s less expensive.
Spencer
Correct.
Troy
So other people can build on that and if they can miraculously get that stainless steel.
Spencer
Yeah. Allow them the quote their more expensive option. Right. That’s fair game. Yeah. The client should not suffer because someone else is not up to our speed.
Troy
Right. Exactly.
Spencer
The last thing on copper before we move on. If you do happen to not put glycol in the system and you burst your coil, you can get you can recycle your copper and.
Troy
So much easier to repair a copper coil.
Spencer
Yeah that the.
Troy
Steel coil as well.
Spencer
But if you wanted to replace it.
Troy
Yeah.
Spencer
You can get some money back for that copper. I don’t think you’re going to get much, if anything, for your galvanized coil.
Troy
Very true.
Spencer
Yeah, so very much. Right.
Troy
So how much time? How long are we?
00:51:34:18 – 00:51:41:21
Brian
That’s a great question. I was going to say it’s time for closing comments. And we promised a championship rib recipe.
Troy
Oh.
Spencer
I feel like we could talk so much longer about food coolers or.
Brian
Maybe we’ll do a follow up episode. Okay.
Troy
All right. So closing comments on fluid coolers. We like them. We like them a lot.
Spencer
We fluid coolers.
Troy
We I visit. There’s going to be a display of I love I fluid coolers here. One thing this great little commercial plug about Marley speaks is they have literally patented they have almost all the patents in the industry and they have every type of fluid cooler available both for draft induced draft counter flow across flow galvanized steel, copper coil, stainless coil.
Troy
We we love it because we don’t have an ax to grind other than make sure that we’re making the right recommendation for the application.
Spencer
Super valuable for customers because they get an unbiased opinion. Right? We have it all. So really it’s about your application. I’m not going to pigeonhole you. We’re guys down the wrong path because I only have a certain product, right? You’re open to everything. What do you actually need for your.
Troy
But all of that being said, if we had our choice, we would probably specify a copper coil induced draft cross flow hybrid. Hybrid, fluid cooler.
Spencer
Yes. For larger tonnages, right. For probably 150, maybe 200 tons. And under I like the LW, it is counter flow. That’s the only thing different between the.
Troy
But it does have the ECM motors on.
Spencer
It. It’s got the same motors if you want them, but it’s got the direct drive bands, it’s plug and play controls. Installation is so much easier than a standard fluid, cooler, standard cooling.
Troy
Tower, right?
Spencer
It’s a great product.
Troy
So LW and.
Spencer
MH F element.
Troy
MH RF element. Okay, that’s it. Now for what everybody has stuck around for is championship rib recipe. And this is a championship rib recipe because we had a smoke off in our St Louis office and I humiliate it Jeff Henderson.
Brian
Wow. You just threw his name out.
Troy
Oh yeah. I am sure Jeff Henderson lost big time.
Spencer
So there was two contestants?
Troy
Yeah, there were two contestants. You didn’t have to call that part out. But here it is. And here’s what I love about the recipe. It is super simple. It can be a last minute recipe or a 24 hour recipe. So go wherever you like to get to ribs. Sam’s, Costco, all your butcher baby backs. I like the you know, if I if I’m looking at two slabs of ribs, I want the meteor ones, then the smaller ones makes a difference.
Troy
And then if you’re at your butcher shop, they’ll almost always have peeled the membrane off. Super important to peel the back silver membrane off Sam’s Club. Costco doesn’t do it, but it’s very easy. Just grab a paper towel and just tear it off as you go. Get your favorite rub. I have a favorite rub, Spencer. Are you going to divulge your favorite rub?
Troy
Mine is go to Cabela’s and it’s their sweet rib rub. And this is a crowd pleaser. What’s your favorite rub?
Spencer
I am hooked on Cimarron.
Troy
Dogs, which I’ve never tried. We’re going to pick some up on the way out of here today. Cimarron Docks or Cabela’s Sweet Rib Rob and just load up both sides of your ribs, put them in the fridge overnight, get your smoker. We all use pellet smokers. I think within our company we have about 30 of them. We’re very competitive grillers in this company.
Troy
But get your smoker to high heat or high smoke which we typically 210 degrees. Yeah and just put those babies on the smoker I’m not doing 3 to 1. I’m not wrapping them and not putting mustard on them. I’m not doing any of that. Straight on the smoker, no map, no nothing. Just sometimes I’ll touch it up with a little bit more rub.
Troy
You don’t want to put too much on there because it can you can over sweetener, over salt it and just let those ribs go for about four and a half hours. You’ll know they’re done when the meat pulls away. About a quarter inch from the end of the bone. Yeah, four and a half hours. Lop off and then rib test it to see if it’s what you want.
Troy
You don’t want to pick up a slab of ribs in the middle and it fall apart. You want to you want it to be springy, bouncy, right before it falls. Falls apart just before it falls apart. And no sauce. Serve it as is if you have bunch of communists that you’re serving for that demand sauce, put the sauce on the side.
Troy
And if they’re very powerful communists, like maybe a wife or something. Yes, very likely. Based on in the last 15.
Spencer
Minutes, you have to use a sauce, get more of a marmalade. So glaze is nicely instead of a runny sauce. So sticks on it.
Troy
This recipe beat all the 3 to 1 rib recipes. And it’s the easiest recipe I’ve ever done. That’s it.
Spencer
That’s it.
Troy
Give us feedback. If you try it, let us know if you’re a hero at your next barbecue.
Brian
Thank you. Troy and Spencer, for being on engineering tomorrow. Again, the best compliment you can give us is a follow on YouTube as well as a follow on iTunes or Spotify. SoundCloud.
Troy
No, the best compliment is give us a call on your next cooling tower pump boiler flu, cool, or any of your age or cooling or heating needs. Give us a call. That’s the best compliment we can get. Yeah.
Brian
And what’s the best way to reach Midwest machinery for that?
Troy
Just our website. Midwest machinery dot net. We’ve got links to different locations so that you can find Spencer or a team in Oklahoma or a team in Saint Louis or team even in Denver.
Brian
All right. Until next time. Thank you all again. And keep engineering for tomorrow. Today.
Troy
Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thanks for joining us on engineering tomorrow. If you liked the show, please take a moment to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify for even more. Great engineering or construction knowledge. Visit engineering tomorrow dot blog.
