Cornell cools campus with 39°F water from 250 ft below Cayuga Lake, cuts energy 85%

Cornell is one of the biggest and most esteemed universities in the world, sitting on a hill overlooking the 38-mile-long Cayuga Lake with an area of 2,300 acres. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most institutions, including Cornell, used CFC chillers. These first-generation Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODSs) were destroying the ozone layer and warming the climate. When the university had to phase out its ageing CFC chillers due to unreliability and CFC bans under the Montreal Protocol, researchers and engineers looked down the campus slopes towards the cold and deep waters of Cayuga Lake.Earlier, the campus relied on conventional refrigeration chillers and cooling towers to cool down its campus, using about 33,000 gallons per minute.