Carrier Context :
Unique Projects

  The Ampato Maiden

In the few months since her September discovery the "Ampato Maiden" had become a Peruvian national treasure. The likelihood of her being allowed outside the country was slim unless her preservation could be assured. National Geographic's own conservators even suggested there might not be enough time for testing such an important piece of equipment.

The Carrier team, essentially reached the same conclusion , unless, Bullock said, an existing product could be modified to fit the task.

The heart of the cooling unit is a
packaged terminal air conditioner
(PTAC) made in Collierville, Tenn.

"We considered several options, but rejected them all for a variety of reasons," Bullock says. "For example, thermo-electric cooling was very attractive because it has no moving parts. Small portable coolers operating on this principle and powered by an automobile cigarette lighter are commercially available, but we determined a thermo-electric system as large as we needed would have been prohibitively expensive and taken too long to deliver. It also wouldn't have been a Carrier-made product.

"We decided on the PTAC because it already existed, it was reliable, it was easy to service in any part of the world and it would allow us to produce the display cases in the short time we had."

( top of page | continued)