Preventive maintenance - including that involving refrigerants - is gaining acceptance especially among major end users. That's the opinion of officials at Hudson Technologies, a Pearl River, N.Y.-based refrigerant services company specializing in proprietary on-site decontamination services for large comfort and process cooling systems.

The perspective comes with the recent announcement that some of the world's largest companies have engaged Hudson to provide them with the Hudson's RefrigerantSide® Services, including high-speed refrigerant recovery and reclamation services, reactive emergency response services, and refrigerant sales.

"Fifty-four of the Fortune Top 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 50, have utilized some or all of Hudson's products, services, and expertise," said Kevin Zugibe, chairman and CEO of Hudson Technologies.

"We believe that we are now observing a sea change away from existing reactive maintenance in favor of more predictive and preventive maintenance practices in order to achieve significantly reduced annual operating and energy costs. As energy costs continue to rise, businesses must find ways to reduce energy consumption to simply maintain existing profit margins. We believe that our services can provide our customers with savings that outpace the hike in energy costs."

CASE IN POINT

Recently, one Fortune 50 company engaged Hudson to find solutions for optimizing the performance of a large refrigeration system at one of its facilities. Hudson assembled actual operating data from the system and used its analysis models to evaluate the system's mechanical and chemical components. Hudson was able to identify specific inefficiencies and remedial actions, which, upon completion, would result in as much as $1.2 million in annual savings, representing a 37 percent reduction in annual energy costs, Zugibe said.

"We believe that an industry-wide focus on preventing and predicting problems could save hundreds of millions of dollars from the current $35 billion annual energy costs incurred in the United States by large comfort and process cooling systems."

For further information on Hudson, go to www.hudsontech.com.

Publication date: 01/09/2006