Cool way to chill

Keeping Honda Motor Co8217;s facility in Ohio cool during a heat wave without breaking the bank is as simple as freezing water.

Keeping Honda Motor Co8217;s facility in Ohio cool during a heat wave without breaking the bank is as simple as freezing water. The Japanese automaker makes ice at night and then melts it during the day to cool the one million-sq-ft complex of buildings, where vehicles are designed.

Honda says the ice-chiller system saves on electricity costs by reducing power use during peak hours, while requiring less water than its old system. Ice-chiller systems have been used in the past, but primarily by big operations such as convention centers, hospitals and universities rather than factories.

Vikki Michalski, spokeswoman for American Electric Power Co of Columbus, Ohio, said ice-chiller systems are unusual among the utility8217;s manufacturing customers in Ohio. It can take businesses a long time to recover the costs of buying such a system and they take a lot of space, she said.

Honda8217;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. A spider8217;s web of white pipes snake through the spotlessly clean power plant, and the only sound is the metallic hum of a condenser.

Despite the ice-making system in its bowels, the plant is a comfortable 22 degrees Celsius.The ice-making begins about midnight, when two 450-tonne chillers8212; giant metal tanks that look like massive drug capsules8212;kick on.

The chillers cool a salt water solution in the ice pit to minus 5.5 degrees Celsius and circulate it through a series of coils. The water begins freezing on the coils and at the surface. When the process is complete, about eight hours later, an 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 chill the air that circulates through the buildings, cooling workers and heat-generating computer systems.

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John Dirrig, an engineer who works at the facility, said he didn8217;t notice any difference when Honda switched to the system a year ago. 8216;8216;You would never know from a user standpoint,8217;8217; he said. Honda officials declined to say how much the system cost. Allen Bickel, senior facilities engineer, 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 said the idea came from a Honda research facility in Japan that was using a similar system. 8216;8216;It8217;s a large pit, and it looks like a snowcone,8217;8217; Bickel said.

Honda was honoured on Thursday by the United States Green Building Council, a group that advocates for environmentally friendly buildings. 8216;8216;What8217;s cool about it is that it8217;s using ice as the coolant as opposed to any sort of Freon,8217;8217; said Elaine Barnes, executive director of the Cleveland Green Building Coalition.