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How Cold Can You Go? A Look Inside Washington’s Leading Chiller Solution What do the craft beer industry, the dairy industry, and now the extraction industry have in common? They all rely on low temperature refrigeration systems to successfully produce their products. For years, Pro Refrigeration has been a leading chiller solution for both the North American craft beer and dairy industries. Over half of the medals awarded at the Great American Beer Fest 2018 were given to PROChiller customers. In 2016, Pro’s CEO Jim VanderGiessen received a call from an extraction customer, Zach, who informed him that they were using the PROChiller (designed for breweries) to extract oil from cannabis. “Zach had modified our system to operate 15-degrees Fahrenheit colder than we had ever tested before,” VanderGiessen said. “We quickly put our heads together and started designing systems for this market.” “The only question any extractor ever asks a chiller guy is, ‘How cold can you go?’” VanderGiessen mused. “We then began to focus specifically on finding ways to make our equipment work better for the extraction market.” Together with Zach, they set a couple of new targets. First, to design a lower temperature glycol-based coolant system to reach operating temperatures of minus 5-degrees F. Their second target aimed even lower, to hit coolant temperatures of negative 45-degrees F. Soon, they released the M5 Series, which operated at minus 5-degrees F. This model allowed extractors to eliminate high operating costs of using dry ice. After continuous pushing and tinkering, they introduced the M45 Series, which brought their cooling number down to minus 45-degrees F. “Dairy farmers and brewers understand the vital role of their chiller system,” VanderGiessen explained. “That has prepared us well for the extraction market. We started looking for more opportunities to help extractors improve their 88
Cannabis & Tech Today // Fall 2021
processes by delivering colder fluids at higher flow rates.” One early extraction opportunity came from Double Delicious, one of the largest extraction processors in Washington state. Using an ultra-low temp freezer, Double D was spending five days cooling their ethanol after each extraction. Even after those five days, they still couldn’t get the ethanol below negative 30-degrees F. As a solution, the team designed a two-stage stainless steel heat exchanger coupled with a pair of PROChillers: an M5 and an M45. The improved system dropped the ethanol from 70-degrees F to 5-degrees F in stage one, then below minus 40-degrees F in the second stage. The solution was so effective that it created other bottlenecks in the facility that needed to be remedied. Problem solvers at heart, ProRefrigeration jumped at the opportunity to further upgrade the recovery system so that the whole facility could run efficiently.
Now, VanderGiessen sees an open opportunity within the industry. “Currently, for extraction chillers, you can find cheap Chinese imports or really expensive European imports,” he said. “The cheap imports are so affordable that customers simply throw them away instead of repairing them. The really expensive systems are specialized machines, and it’s very difficult to find people to service them.” VanderGiessen’s hope is to fill in this gap and provide competitively priced chiller systems to this burgeoning industry. But, he’ll never lose sight of that key question: How cold can you go? ❖
