News: Firechill progresses free cooling technology

FireChill, the green cooling and heating company, is closer to taking their unique technology to market after successfully connecting one of its high-efficiency, gas-fired absorption chillers to a microturbine to deliver free cooling.


FireChill is working with Capstone to produce ammonia absorption chilling packages, powered by Capstone C65 Microturbines for combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) applications. The patented, heat-activated cooling technology recovers the energy from the exhaust heat of the low-emission microturbine and effectively delivers free cooling.

The green benefits are magnified many times by recycling the exhaust heat and by extracting the heat from the exhaust, there is less heat expelled into the atmosphere, reducing the effect of global warming.

The systems are well suited to construction sites, off-grid environments, data centres and a number of portable and temporary uses which opens the doors to new markets for both FireChill and Capstone distributors.

The units are to be manufacturing in Templeborough in Rotherham, creating 100 new jobs directly and many more in the supply chain. A joint venture (JV) between Rotherham-based Newburgh Engineering and Leeds-based Firechill was created in 2010.

Simon Clothier, CEO at FireChill, said: "This is a promising development for us and marks another milestone en route to launching our CCHP PowerChill product to a global market. We are delighted to be working in partnership with Capstone and look forward to being able to offer the ultra low cost cooling solution for sale through their worldwide network. Capstone's specialist distributors have been asking for this product for some time and will in due course develop numerous, free cooling applications.

"We are also pleased to have stolen a march on our competitors whom we know for a fact have been attempting to pair small-scale gas-fired chillers with microturbines for the past decade with limited success. The unique, dual-firing capability of FireChill's unit makes it even more competitive as the chiller can now operate 24/7 with or without exhaust heat."

FireChill's units have also been successfully fitted to an IVECO diesel generating set and when used in conjunction with a condenser, the technology can even produce water extracted from high humidity air, or recovered from cooling tower vapour and stored for later use.

In 2010 FireChill secured just under £1m from a group of private investors to add to the £4m invested to date in research and development. Further funding was secured last year.

The PowerChill family of products, which includes new heat capture technology, will be available for commercial sales later this year.

FireChill website

Images: FireChill