Owner Jerry Callabresi saw a niche in the heat exchanger market and intends to take full advantage of it. He gives credit to employee John West for coming up with the idea.

“We didn’t have the room to build the model, so we used a one-car garage,” said Callabresi.

At a recent open house at the Municipal Power Plant in Norton, KS, Callabresi management was on hand to show off the Magnum, which was installed in the plant in July.

“They [power plant management] were having an energy problem,” said West, who Callabresi calls a “jack-of-all-trades.” “They had an electric-powered steam boiler that needed to be replaced. The exchanger took us two months to build, from start to finish.”

The Salina contractor has had a lot of experience in the heat exchange market. Callabresi works in several markets in mid-Kansas, including residential, commercial, and industrial service. The company also specializes in refrigeration and plumbing services. Owner Callabresi likes the position he is in.

“We feel that we can handle any type of job right now,” he said.

What is it?

The product may be used in open-vented applications — such as open slurry tanks, plating tanks, lagoons, vented storage tanks, etc. — or closed applications, with means of handling expansion of the liquid product with properly sized expansion tanks.

It is designed so that the tube bundle section may be removed for periodic maintenance, with an alternative removable blind flange as an option to facilitate cleaning without removal of the tube bundle section.

According to the company, potential users of the Magnum include metal finishers, hospitals, laundries, chemical manufacturers, appliance manufacturers, schools, colleges, food processors, drink processors, the petroleum industry, power generation plants, agriculture, and oem’s using heating liquids.

Equipment that can be replaced by the heat exchanger could be steam boilers, feed water pumps, condensate receiver tanks, steam to other liquid heat exchangers, hot water boilers, etc.

In the case of the Norton Municipal Power Plant, the 296 kW steam boiler, conventional steam-to-hot water exchanger, and the feed water tank assembly all needed replacing. The hot water produced by the old system was used to keep internal combustion power generation equipment warm during stand-by periods.

According to Callabresi, the old system consumed 718,320 kW in 1998, at a cost of $26,367. Callabresi estimates that the Magnum, which consumes 600 CFH natural gas, will trim the plant’s annual energy bill by approximately $10,000.

“The heat exchanger has been working flawlessly since start up with 480,000 Btuh input with an output in hot water heated of 419,520 Btuh,” said Harold McCoy, a boiler and chiller sales rep for Callabresi.

Callabresi will begin October production on six standard sizes of the Magnum, ranging from 150,000 Btuh input to 3 million Btuh input. He said there would be a 6-week lead-time on standard sizes until full production begins in June 2000. Custom configurations will take slightly longer because of design criteria.

Better mousetrap?

Said McCoy, “I realize that the world is full of people that believe they have a better idea or mousetrap. But I believe that we have come up with a piece of equipment that could have an exciting future.”

The company is so sure of the future of the Magnum and other related products, it has formed a separate company called Callabresi Combustion Systems, Inc. And, apparently, there’s more in the works.

“We are in the process of doing a patent search for another product we are working on,” said Callabresi.

For more information on the CCS Magnum 250, call 785-825-2599.