B Surendar

Let me start off by saying that the inaugural C3 in Saudi Arabia was well received and that issues of significance came up for substantial and meaningful discussion. Considering that the conference is from the same stable as the magazine, you may question the objectivity of my observations, but as the coverage on the event (please turn to page 26) will reveal, that was, indeed, the case.

The conference served as a forum on several fronts. For long, the Kingdom, a pioneer in air conditioning-, refrigeration- and ventilation-related installations in the region, has emerged with sophisticated technological advances. The sheer size of the country being such, these projects have been spread so far and wide that they have remained relatively obscure and tucked away from accolades. The conference was a convergence of the technological advancements, be it the central cooling facility in King Saud University or the massive cold storage facilities at Tabuk Agricultural Development Company (TADCO), which by the way, I am told, is so large a farm that it occupies an area comparable to the whole of Bahrain.

On the issue front, the announcement by National Water Company (NWC) that it is committed to supplying treated sewage effluent (TSE) to key projects and key cities in the Kingdom was welcome news, considering the acute water shortage in Saudi Arabia and its impact on district cooling, in terms of perception and feasibility. Hisham Hajaj of Stanley Consultants provided an instance of the positive perception while making a presentation on the Retirement Fund projects in the Kingdom. Speaking about the two district cooling plant rooms in the King Abdullah Financial District project, Hajaj said that the wise officials at the Retirement Fund consented to consider district cooling as an option only after they were assured of a steady supply of TSE.

Another issue that sparked interest among delegates concerned the discussion on large central cooling plants and an integrated approach to district cooling, turbine inlet air cooling (TIAC) and other industrial applications. The discussion unveiled an appealing option for district cooling providers, long faced with the vexing issue of amorphous load-profiles.

Speaking about the overall profile of the conference, for us, as organisers, we stood by our tradition of producing a dedicated and comprehensive HVACR conference. Though it gets quite cold in TADCO (it goes to even minus five degrees centigrade, I am told), heating was not an area that came up for discussion; but all the other letters of the acronym stood up pretty well in Riyadh.