Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ), second largest in Florida's 28 community colleges, needed to upgrade and modernize the chiller plant at its showcase North Campus. As part of the renovation plan, the campus turned to Daikin and its Magnitude chiller technology to replace one of three chillers, yielding substantial energy savings and noise reduction.

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North Campus is one of the largest of the College's four physical campuses, serving 6,000 students in more than a half-dozen major buildings. The campus is well known in the state for its nursing and health-related programs, according to Campus President, Dr. Barbara Darby.

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After conducting an extensive engineering study and energy audit in 2004, the campus considered a number of upgrade scenarios to its chiller plant and building automation system according to Mark Gandy, the North Campus HVAC facilities manager. However, the original recommendations for a chiller replacement from the study failed to meet budget or energy-savings requirements. 

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During the evaluation process, the project team, led by the college's mechanical engineer Geng Liu (presently with California State University) and FCCJ Project Manager Ed Rock visited another Florida college and saw the performance of the Daikin Magnitude, magnetic bearing compressor chiller. After seeing first-hand the impressive energy efficiency and quiet operation of that unit, the project team reconfigured its plan to incorporate the Daikin chiller.

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The new 300-ton Daikin Magnitude, magnetic-bearing chiller replaced a low-pressure centrifugal chiller that used a CFC refrigerant. The project team also noted that the Daikin chiller uses R-134a, a refrigerant with no phase-out schedule and no ozone depletion potential. This new compressor design is oil-free which eliminates the lubrication system and its inherent problems and maintenance. 

"In the past, we've held to a particular centrifugal chiller manufacturer around the campus system," Gandy says. "This is the first large centrifugal chiller from another vendor that we've purchased, and based on this new oil-free and Magnitude technology, the North Campus will now lead the way on lowered electrical costs."

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The best and only solution

The Daikin Magnitude chiller emerged as the clear choice for a part-load chiller which was a key point for the project team. The high efficiency of this machine at part-load conditions allows the college to select it as the lead machine during true part-load conditions, supplemented by two older base-load centrifugal chillers that serve the main buildings on the 160-acre campus. According to the Daikin representative for the project from Brooks Air Systems, Inc., of Jacksonville, the replacement of a 30-year-old CFC-refrigerant chiller with the Daikin Magnitude chiller was the perfect solution as a part-load chiller in a multi-chiller central energy plant.

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The new Daikin unit was installed in January 2007, and fully commissioned in June 2007 after significant retrofitting, integration and testing with the campus building automation system. "The project wasn't just a replacement of one chiller. We also did a major reconstruction of the plant," Gandy explains. The project included replacement of pumps and the transformation from a constant-volume system (or primary system) to a primary-secondary (or decoupled) system."We also installed variable frequency drives on the secondary pumps for additional energy savings."

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The project required some unique and challenging work schedules for the campus that were coordinated through Willie Jacobs, Senior Supervisor of the Campus Plant. Jacobs credits the stellar work of the team at W.W. Gay Mechanical, including project manager Wes Shaver, on the successful integration of the new Daikin plant with the campus building automation system. The project requirements included a revision of the building automation system (BAS) explains Wayne Cook, service administrator at W.W. Gay Mechanical in Jacksonville, Fla.

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