Johnson Controls Lands Development Project in Kingdom of Bahrain
Largest order of energy efficient chillers breaks company record
Johnson Controls today announced it will supply 18 York-branded YK – K7 water-cooled centrifugal chillers to the Bahrain Bay project in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Bahrain Bay is a $2.5 billion, mixed-use iconic development on the Northern waterfront of Manama City, Bahrain. It includes, commercial towers, banking headquarters, shopping malls, five star hotels and residential townships that will cater to more than 25,000 residents.
“We see this as the beginning of a new trend of using seawater as cooling water for large district cooling plants in the Middle East region. Johnson Controls has the best suitable equipment for such application, we expect to gain a leading position in this potentially fast growing market segment,” added Vivek Apte, regional marketing manager for large capacity chillers.  
The large chiller order comes from Unicorp International Contracting WLL Bahrain, the EPC contractor to Dalkia for Bahrain Bay utilities project. Dalkia is the facilities manager and district cooling service provider for the Bahrain Bay project. Mr. Amin Ashkar, the Unicorp project director stated “the selection of YORK chillers came about after weeks of detailed and rigorous technical evaluation and comparison among the manufacturers of such type of chillers”.
”We are delighted to be suppliers for a corporation such as Dalkia, which shares Johnson Controls’ values relating to energy management and conservation. These chillers are special machines and will contribute to building a more comfortable, safe and sustainable world.” said KR Sankaran, Johnson Controls regional manager for the Northern Gulf.

“Manufactured at Johnson Controls’ facility in San Antonio Texas, the chillers will be installed in a series counter-flow configuration which will yield an additional 6 percent gain in efficiency,” said Shuaib Baig, Bahrain’s sales manager.  “At peak operating conditions, the chillers will supply about 67,500 gallons per minute of chilled water to the residents of Bahrain Bay.”
Higher operating efficiencies and product durability; A clear win for environmental sustainability.
• Johnson Controls YORK chillers are high efficiency chillers and use environmentally friendly, non-ozone-depleting HFC-134a refrigerant.
• The use of titanium tubes permits the use of sea water for heat rejection. Other chillers using sweet water cooling towers for heat rejection could have consumed up to 1300 gallons per minute of sweet water to make up for evaporation from the cooling towers.
• Titanium is highly resistant to both erosion and corrosion. This facilitates the use of internally enhanced high performance tubes and permits water to be circulated at high velocities through the tubes resulting in greater heat transfer and higher operating efficiencies.
• The Johnson Controls YORK chiller will operate at extreme entering condenser water temperatures that would cause many other makes of chillers to shut down under such extreme operating conditions.