ReChill Systems · speculative install sketch
Bowers Shrimp Farm
Palacios, TX · Aquaculture year-round · family-founded · shrimp processor
DOC. RC-SKETCH-004
2026-05-28
T. ELLSWORTH
JUST WONDERING
Year-round shrimp aquaculture = the cleanest CO₂ duty cycle there is. Steady load, no seasonal swing, no hot-gas bypass. The R1 ReChill vertical hits hardest here.
Installed Load
~80 TR
R-404A / R-448A (HFC)
kW / TR Delta
2.0 → 1.4
part-load matched
Annual Saving (est.)
$78K
5.3 yr simple payback
HFC Top-Up
$800/yr
at $25/lb · rising
What the parts list looks like
main process + freeze load
1 × ReChill C40combined capacity
variable-speedBACK-OF-NAPKIN TOTAL
$410K
The math (one slide)
installed thermal load (est.)80 TR
current refrigerant + chargeR-404A / R-448A (HFC) · 400 lb
current annual electric (est.)$168K/yr
ReChill annual electric (est.)$90K/yr
ELECTRIC DELTA · 5.3 yr simple payback~$78K/yr
Bowers Shrimp · the angle
R-404A at $20-30/lb today and going to $50+/lb by 2029. Every pound of HFC charge is a forward liability. CO₂ has no phasedown clock and no refill bill — a single C40 covers your steady-state load and runs off three Tesla packs sitting at Houston salvage.
Be brutal with my numbers
Gulf Coast ambient is the live CO₂ engineering question — high summer wet-bulb pushes transcritical capacity ~15-30% below NH₃ equivalent. ReChill design plan: parallel compression + ejector + oversized gas cooler. Honest: this is the use case that takes the most engineering judgment, not the least. · Decision-maker on file:
Harold & Cheryl Bowers · Co-Founders (R1 vertical · year-round steady load = best CO₂ unit economics).