McKinney Campus facilities workers recently completed a pretty cool deal, saving the college money while ensuring the campus’s air conditioning can keep pumping chilled air for years to come.
As a part of the switch from an old heating and air conditioning system in the McKinney Campus’s A and B wings to a new Trane Earthwise system, the college had to recover several hundred pounds of R22 refrigerant in the old system. McKinney Campus Facilities Manager Ken Dunlap said that while the college had considered purchasing $3,000 in canisters to store the refrigerant for later processing and re-use, he and his team found a local vendor who would recover the R22 for a portion of the recovered refrigerant and no additional cost.
On March 8, DFW Refrigerants recovered more than 700 pounds of R22 refrigerant from the old equipment. On March 12, the company returned 300 pounds of reclaimed, re-usable refrigerant with a value of $4,500. As the college still has some remaining R22 equipment not yet scheduled for phase-out, Dunlap hopes that this large stockpile of refrigerant will last through the remaining service life of the equipment.
“This recovery process was truly a win-win-win,” Dunlap said. “It saved the HVAC contractor time and labor. DFW Refrigerants will benefit from their recovered share. And Collin College received a large stock pile of their recovered refrigerant valued at $4,500.”
The Trane Earthwise HVAC system is environmentally friendly and highly efficient, using centrifugal chillers installed during the construction of the Cary A. Israel Health Sciences Center’s central plant. The chillers’ cold water is pumped into chilled water lines which were extended to McKinney Campus’s A and B wings over spring break. The Freon coils in the old system have been removed, and new chilled water coils were installed for use in the new system. The college is removing approximately 400 cooling tons of HVAC equipment from the campus during this process.