Systecon Inc. has been issued a patent for the CritiChill® modular indirect evaporative cooling system.

Invented by Systecon’s engineering team, led by CEO Terry Moses, CritiChill is an indirect evaporative cooling system with a supplemental chiller that can be bypassed as weather conditions dictate. The supplemental chiller is shut down during conditions when the evaporative cooler can efficiently cool the building and is engaged for supplemental cooling when conditions are not conducive for the evaporative cooler to handle all cooling needs.

According to the company, prior to CritiChill there were two cooling options — a water-cooled chiller plant which is extremely efficient or an air-cooled chiller plant which uses less water and chemical treatment.

“We understand the importance of using water properly and wanted to combine the best of both systems — efficient cooling with minimal water usage,” said Moses.

With an adiabatic cooler, the system only uses 20% of the water normally required by a traditional cooling tower and without the harmful chemicals. Coupled with pre-cooling operation, the system provides a level of efficiency near that of a traditional water-cooled chiller, said officials.

CritiChill is ideal for data centers or other buildings with overhead sensible cooling devices that have warm water delivery.

The patent includes any outdoor enclosed heat exchanger that transfers heat optionally from both the indoor chilled water loop and a condenser from a chiller, or from the indoor chilled water loop alone. Adiabatic coolers, evaporative coolers, and dry coolers are included. This allows components to be custom selected to best fit specific project needs, which is true of all Systecon modular utility solutions.