Chillers

Chillers are the heart of a cooling system in a large building including condominiums and large commercial buildings. They use power to drive compressors to compress refrigerant, cool the refrigerant, which allows it to expand to cool (chill) water. The chilled water is then used to cool the building through heat exchangers and coils. Heat from the chiller is rejected through a cooling tower located on the outside of the building. In the last couple of years, chillers have gone through significant improvements to increase their efficiency, therefore reducing the amount of energy to produce the same amount of cooling. Improvements have also been made in the operation of the chillers with the use of computer controls and sophisticated interfacing with the Building Automation Systems. Older chillers’ were 0.85 to 0.80 kW/Tonnes of cooling while the newer chillers are significantly more efficient around 0.55 to 0.45 kW/Tonnes of cooling.

There are many different types of chillers

Centrifugal, screw, semi-hermetic(reciprocating), scroll, to finally absorption chillers. Each chiller type has it particular application and efficiency for a type of application. New types of chillers have frequency drives to regulate the speed of the motor thus increasing or decrease the amount of refrigerant flow and some use magnets instead of oil and bearings to support the shaft and motor. Chiller sizes vary from 1 tonnes, to cool a house to thousands of tonnes to cool large high rise buildings or multiple buildings. Some installations will use multiple chillers to have redundancies while others will use multiple compressors on a single chiller. Different chillers may use different refrigerants with 134a being the most popular but others are R123 and R410. The types of refrigerant depends on the size, type, and application of the chiller along with the required supply temperatures. Normal building cooling requires chilled water to be supplied between 42 0F (5.5 0C) to 48 0F (9.0 0C) for proper cooling and dehumidification. Other applications may require lower temperatures.

Maintain your Building's Cooling Systems.

Avoid Failures, Downtime, Maintain Cost and Save Energy Depending on the age, condition and efficiency of your building's Chiller's it may be time to consider replacement.

CHILLERS

  • Typical chiller (s) have a life expectancy of 25-30 years.

  • Chiller (s) can become unreliable and require constant repairs.

  • Cost of maintenance is high on older chiller(s)

TYPES OF CHILLERS:

  • Magnetic bearing chiller (s), with variable frequency drive (VFD) without oil.

  • Multiple compressor chiller (s) with and without VFD

  • Standard chiller (s) with VFD

  • Standard chiller (s) without VFD

Replacement can now be justified earlier due to energy savings from the new chiller(s).

 M & E CHILLER DESIGN SERVICES :

  • Review of sizing & chiller selection

  • Design of the installation of the new chiller(s)

  • Re-piping for proper flow and efficiency

  • Pump VFD

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