Chiller Plant

Project Highlights

M/E Engineering was retained by Binghamton University as the lead professional for the upgraded centralized Chiller Plant for the University’s Science Complex. The design included coordination of general construction/roofing work, structural steel, and hazardous materials abatement necessary to perform the chilled water plant upgrades.  Detailed coordination was done to accommodate the project rigging challenges. The chilled water plant was upgraded to have a total capacity of 1500 Tons of cooling along with added system redundancy.

M/E Role

• Replaced a 675 Ton chiller with a new 1500 Ton dual compressor chiller to increase capacity and N+1 redundancy
• Pumping, piping and controls upgrades to improve system energy efficiency and operations
• Removed existing ground mounted concrete cooling towers and added new 1500 Ton roof mounted induced draft cooling towers
• Extended piping to the Science II Building and eliminated the local chillers. Piping was sized with the ability to serve Science I in the future.
• Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modeling to confirm the tower drift did not affect any adjacent buildings or outside air intakes
• Electrical distribution upgrades and connections to accommodate the increased chiller capacity