The difference is that they remove heat from chilled water by exhausting the heat to a second, isolated water line called the condenser water line. The condenser water flows through the chiller and picks up heat.
The condenser water then returns to the cooling tower. The cooling tower is almost always located outside of the building and removes heat from the condenser water by evaporating some of the condenser water into the atmosphere. As some of the condenser water evaporates, heat is removed from the condenser water, and the cool condenser water flows back to the chiller.
Water-cooled chiller systems are very energy efficient. However, due to their complexity and many different parts, they are often more expensive to install and maintain.
For this reason, you will usually only find them in large buildings. This is because the energy savings outweigh the cost of installing and maintaining the system. However, water-cooled chillers are starting to make an appearance in small buildings as well. Recent advancements have made it practical to install and maintain water-cooled chillers in buildings that usually would not have one.
According to the U. When you consider that chillers are often one of the largest consumers of energy inside a building, their performance can have a huge impact on operational costs. For this reason, the efficiency of a chiller plant is often closely monitored for potential improvement. Optimizing a chiller plant is a complex task that involves gathering data and making calculations.
Emphasis is often placed on the chiller since it is the most visible and typically the highest energy element of a chilled water system. In large building and facilities, chilled water-cooling systems can yield many advantages, including refrigerant and maintenance containment, energy efficiency, and low installed cost.
Those advantages can also be magnified when building owners work with a partner to maintain the full system over the lifetime of the system to reap additional rewards.
The full system means that we need to look beyond the chiller itself to other key components such as chilled and condenser water pumps, cooling towers, heat exchangers, and hydronic specialties including water pressure regulators, air separators, and chemical feed pots. Controls are also critical to the system because they operate water valves, control set points and schedule equipment. Maintenance issues for the larger chilled water system, including those at the component level, may indeed originate at the chiller.
Yet, real detective work may be necessary to identify the root cause since trouble may start somewhere in the ancillary components of the chilled water system. Condenser water pumps circulate the cooling water between the chiller water cooled condenser and cooling tower or other heat rejection device.
Pumps not sequencing properly or low flow conditions may fault a chiller and not be understood until operation is restored. Common centrifugal impeller pump types include end-suction and split case construction. Service considerations are pump and motor bearing lubrication and water seal cooling on larger pumps. Motor-pump shaft alignment is important and should be checked periodically as heavy piping and supports may shift over time.
Providing positive suction pressure is important to prevent capitation and air erosion. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Prev NEXT. Household Appliances. Chilled water systems - In a chilled-water system, the entire air conditioner is installed on the roof or behind the building. It cools water to between 40 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit 4. The chilled water is then piped throughout the building and connected to air handlers.
This can be a versatile system where the water pipes work like the evaporator coils in a standard air conditioner. If it's well-insulated, there's no practical distance limitation to the length of a chilled-water pipe.
Cooling tower technology - In all of the air conditioning systems we've described so far, air is used to dissipate heat from the compressor coils. For instance, large commercial buildings requiring a substantial amount of cooling, often use chillers because of their cost-effectivess.
So, since many types of air conditioners cool the air through direct contact with refrigerant lines, there are cases when chillers might be a better solution than air conditioners, which are also more difficult to install in large buildings.
Flexibility, then, is another great advantage that chilled water systems can provide. Chillers in fact, can have many different configurations. They can be installed indoor, outdoor, they can feature different compressors and refrigerants depending the cooling capacity and the efficiency needed. In short, chillers are perfectly customizable options. They can allow the choice of many different options and accessories that can perfectly adapt the chiller unit to the needs of a specific application.
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