Honda Motor is keeping its research facility in western Ohio cool in the middle of a heat wave by freezing water.
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The automaker makes ice at night and then melts it during the day to cool the 1m square foot building complex, according to The Associated Press. Honda reportedy says the ice-chiller system saves money in electricity costs and uses less water than its old system.
Ice-chiller systems have been used in the past, according to AP, but primarily by big operations such as convention centres, hospitals and universities.
A spokeswoman for the local electricity supplier said use of ice-chiller systems among its manufacturing customers in Ohio is unusual, and it can take businesses a long time to recover the costs of buying such a system which takes a lot of space.
AP said Honda’s ice pit, which sits under the floor of the power plant that serves the complex, is 20 yards long, about 9 yards wide and about 8 feet deep. White pipes snake through the spotlessly clean plant, and the only sound is the metallic hum of a condenser. Despite the ice-making system in its basement, the plant is a comfortable 72 degrees F (22C).
The ice-making begins about midnight when two 450-ton chillers – giant metal tanks turn on. The chillers take the salt water solution in the ice pit down to 22 degrees and circulate it through a series of coils. The water begins freezing on the coils and when the process is complete, about eight hours later, a 1-inch-thick sheet of ice has formed on the top of the pit.
When workers arrive in the morning at the plant, the icy solution is used to cool the air that circulates through the buildings, cooling workers and heat-generating computer systems, AP said.
Honda told the news agency the system enables it to keep its electric rates down by reducing usage during peak power times.
Its senior facilities engineer, Allen Bickel, said that while it costs more than conventional systems, he expects it to pay for itself in three years and last as many as 30 years.
Bickel told The Associated Press the idea came from a Honda research facility in Japan, which was using a similar system.
“It’s a large pit, and it looks like a snowcone,” Bickel said. “They make ice, and they drop it down into the pit. Then they pull it back out and run it through a heat exchanger,” he added.
AP noted that Honda has been by the United States Green Building Council, a group that promotes energy efficient, environmentally friendly buildings – the award was in part because of the ice-chilling system.
