Last week Joe Davis, Don Nelson, Clayton Settle and I had the unique opportunity for a visit to Cambridge Air Solutions in Chesterfield, Missouri. The purpose of our visit was to show a prospective customer a working unit of Cambridge’s indirect evaporative cooling product line. Our customer was evaluating using a Cambridge indirect evaporative cooling (IEC) unit as a cost effective alternative to air conditioning to cool their facility and wanted to see an operating unit prior to make the substantial investment. Thankfully, the Cambridge team welcomed all of us with full COVID-19 protocols in place.
The timing of our visit was perfect as Cambridge had recently completed pad mounting a 56,000 CFM IEC unit that will be used to cool their own manufacturing facility. To provide the equivalent of 50 tons of cooling capacity, the size of the IEC unit was 39 feet long, 13.5 feet wide and 8.25 feet tall. The picture below shows Clayton standing in front of the intake sections to the heat exchangers where the indirect evaporative cooling takes place.
The Cambridge IEC units are semi-customizable with options for direct evaporative cooling, cooling coils for direct compression or chilled water air conditioning, and direct or indirect fired gas heaters. For their own unit, Cambridge had added direct evaporative cooling and direct fired gas heaters. The picture on the left below shows the inside of the unit with the direct evaporative media hanging in front of the exhaust side of the heat exchangers. The picture on the right below shows the controls for the heater section.
After seeing the IEC unit in operation, Cambridge took us on a tour of their facility. One of the great value attributes of a Cambridge product is their quality of manufacturing. We were able to witness how having empowered their employees to streamline processes has directly yielded a higher standard of quality. The way that their entire facility was set-up was intentionally done to maximize productivity and eliminate waste.
On behalf of Eldridge and our customer, I want to say thank-you to the Cambridge Air Solutions team for accommodating our group and making the visit very productive.