Lytron Awarded Workforce Training Fund Grant

Lytron was recently awarded a $106,800 grant for employee training and professional development. Lytron will be using the grant to pay for trainings for more than 150 office and factory employees in Massachusetts. The trainings will be largely focused on lean manufacturing and are expected to help improve overall product quality and first pass yields of custom chillers, cooling systems, cold plates, and heat exchangers. They are also expected to help Lytron identify ways to further increase efficiency under its current lean manufacturing program. Read Press Release

The Cooling Chronicle

For nearly 10 years, Lytron has been publishing a complimentary monthly e-newsletter called “The Cooling Chronicle.” The e-newsletter’s topics include liquid cooling, thermal management, chillers, cooling systems, cold plates, and heat exchangers. Application notes, news, events, blog posts, and more are included. The e-newsletter is recommended for thermal engineers and buyers in the medical, aviation, military, power generation, traction, laser, and semiconductor industries. Our readers are provided with the most relevant information in a clean, concise format with zero advertisements. Subscribe before August 31st to receive the September edition!

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Affinity Chillers

Lytron announced today that it has acquired Lydall Industrial Thermal Solutions, Inc (“Affinity”) from Lydall, Inc (NYSE). Affinity is a leading designer and manufacturer of high performance industrial chillers and liquid-to-liquid cooling systems for the semiconductor, laser, and industrial markets.

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Chiller Cools New Novus X-Ray Inspection System

One of Lytron’s OEM customers, Novus X-Ray, specializes in providing systems for the detection of product defects in closed packages by using non-invasive automated x-ray inspection techniques. The company recently integrated Lytron’s Kodiak recirculating chiller model RC009 into its new C4 x-ray inspection system. The chiller provides cooling to the x-ray generator as well as provides environmental temperature control for the IP69K, air tight, x-ray unit and the top sealed chamber of the cabinet. According to David DiPrato, the president and CEO of Novus, their engineers selected Lytron chillers because of the chillers’ high thermal performance, hot-gas bypass, PD pump, and overall value (capacity/price). A hot-gas bypass, which comes standard with every Lytron Kodiak recirculating chiller, extends the life of the compressor and improves the chiller’s reliability. For more information on Novus X-Ray, please call +1-215-962-3171. For more information on Lytron’s chillers or x-ray cooling, please call +1-781-933-7300 or visit http://www.Lytron.com.

Visual Factory Chillers

A visual factory is a factory that uses visual methods to convey information in a lean manufacturing environment. Lytron operates a visual factory that is continuously striving to improve quality and on-time delivery for its customers. The current status of jobs is clear to everyone involved and everyone is, quite literally, on the same page. For example, the chiller team works off of flat screen monitors at each work station that show them all of the build documentation electronically, and the current week’s production goals and customer commitment dates are posted in the factory for everyone to see and reference as needed. Lytron also uses color coding in numerous areas to help employees quickly and easily identify prototypes that have special handling requirements.  

Stockholm, Sweden

An article written by Yevgeniy Sverdlik in the January issue of Data Center Dynamics FOCUS magazine, titled “Sweden pitches for data centers,” reviews the attractive pitch the Invest in Sweden Agency (ISA) has for data centers. The country boasts district heating and cooling systems that allow customers to feed their waste heat energy into the system and trade it for cooling energy. IBM is one of the companies taking advantage of this, using its waste heat to warm its own building as well as selling its excess heat back to the energy company in the form of hot water. Fortum, the energy company, uses seawater for cooling from about January through August. The company provides the cold water at a temperature of 6°C (43°F). Fortum recently built a thermal storage facility in a mountain, capable of storing 40MW worth of cooling. By taking advantage of its cold climate, Fortum is able to provide some of its Swedish customers with a heating and cooling value proposition that is better than in other areas of Europe.

Tieto, one of the leading data center owners and operators in the Nordics, is also taking advantage of Sweden’s environment for energy efficiency and cost savings. Tieto is currently building a data center in a cave. The data center, which is scheduled for opening in April 2010, will use outside air and the cave’s long tunnels for cooling the data center most of the year. In the summer, the company will use chillers to supplement the cooling. Like IBM’s facility, Tieto’s cave facility also plans to use excess heat to warm its facility and sell its excess heat to the utility.

 One other way of taking advantage of a cool climate is to use a liquid-to-liquid cooling system for data center cooling. A liquid-to-liquid cooling system supplies temperature controlled coolant to liquid cooled cabinets. The cooling is provided by a separate facility water loop, which could be cooled by the environment.  

Although we can’t all take advantage of caves for cooling or district heating systems, we can look for innovative ways to cool data centers more efficiently. With the large expense of cooling a data center, it pays to take the time to be sure that the data center cooling solution selected will be the most economical and easy-to-manage over the long term.

Recirculating Chiller

Lytron frequently receives questions through its “Ask an Engineer” website form. A customer recently asked the following question: “Does the RC022J03BF2C031 include the optional heater?”

The RC022, one of Lytron’s standard recirculating chillers, does have an optional 2,000 Watt electric resistance heater. This heater option allows the chiller to more quickly reach a set point temperature above the ambient temperature. This is useful for applications where a cold start is necessary or where the coolant set point is frequently cycled. The heater option is available on the RC011, RC022, RC030, and RC045 recirculating chillers. Options available on standard chillers can be reviewed under the chiller specifications page. Additional options are available for custom chillers.