How can I determine the type of cooling equipment that I need?

Firstly, knowing the temperature that the process needs to be kept at, or the temperature that the cooling fluid needs to be maintained at will help determine what type of cooling equipment is required. This information may be given within your process machinery specification. If it isn’t, please contact us and one of our cooling specialists can assist further.

Generally, chillers will ensure that the cooling fluid can be maintained below ambient temperature conditions, even during the hottest months of the year and cooling towers and the various types of coolers that we offer will only maintain a cooling fluid temperature above ambient conditions. For further information on these products, please see the further FAQs below, look at the relevant sections of our website, or contact us to discuss further.

How can I calculate the size of cooling equipment that I need?

Your process machinery specification should have all, or some of the information to help determine the size of cooling equipment required. This will be in the form of A) the heat load, B) the flow rate and C) the temperature difference between the fluid inlet and outlet. If only two of these items are available, we can put them into a heat load calculation to work out the missing information and if less information is available then you can discuss the application in further detail with us and we can assist in the correct sizing through further investigation.

How can I ensure that the chiller is correct for my application?

Our chillers are suitable for numerous applications, and we have many options such as air cooled, ductable with high pressure fans, water cooled, various pump / tank configurations, wide operating ranges (both in ambient and fluid temperatures) and special protective treatment to the condensers and copper pipework for aggressive environments to name but a few.

If you need further assistance with this, please contact us to ensure that the right chiller is selected for your application.

What is an Industrial Process Chiller?

An industrial process chiller is a chiller that has been specifically designed for process environments and applications, whether it be a small unit sited internally next to a single injection moulding machine, or laser, or externally for larger units that will serve multiple processes. Please see below for a more detailed explanation and the differences generally seen between HVAC and an industrial process chillers.

What is the difference between a HVAC Chiller and an Industrial Process Chiller?

HVAC chillers tend to have low pressure pumps that serve separate tanks or low loss headers and as such, may not have the available pressure to overcome intricate water channels within mould tools, or other process applications. They also tend to follow a slower load profile and so the thermal buffer within the chiller / system is often smaller than what is required for the varying loads often found in process applications and due to the comfort cooling / non-critical nature of HVAC chillers, they often only have a single refrigeration circuit even when the chiller has multiple compressors.

With our process chillers, we have many pump options from 1.5 bar for point of use / low pressure drop applications, to 3 and 5 bar for larger pipework systems / higher pressure drop applications. Our buffer tanks, condensers and evaporators are oversized that increase temperature stability over fluctuating process loads, reducing compressor stop / starts, increasing system resilience, and giving high energy efficiency values. We also use twin circuit design from 78kW (nominal) and above, have a robust frame design, condenser filters, and wide operating tolerances as standard to assist in the many arduous locations and environments that process chillers can be installed in.

Why are chillers used?

Chillers tend to be used in process cooling applications when the temperature of the cooling media needs to kept below ambient temperatures throughout the year.

Depending upon application and model range, our chillers use a number of different refrigerants including Low Global Warning Potential (GWP) refrigerant options to ensure that we can maintain your required water temperatures.

How do industrial chillers work?

Please see our dedicated page here.

What is ambient cooling?

Ambient cooling products are used when you do not need to maintain cooling fluid temperatures below the ambient temperature conditions of your local environment throughout the year. The ambient cooling products that we offer are dry air coolers (sometimes called air blast coolers), adiabatic coolers, free coolers and cooling towers.

As they are not controlling down to the lower set point temperatures that a chiller is designed for, they do not have a refrigerant circuit and so are a lower capital plant cost investment that requires less input power to maintain a set point at any given heat load.

They can also be used in conjunction with a chiller depending upon your full system requirements and the type of chiller that you are using.

What is a dry air cooler / air blast cooler?

A dry air cooler is a heat exchange coil, with fans incorporated into the design to help extract and dissipate the heat from the process fluid.

They are an extremely energy efficient solution when you only need to provide a constant fluid temperature above the ambient conditions. They can achieve a fluid temperature that is only 3°C above the dry bulb ambient temperature.

For example, if the summer temperature within your location reaches a maximum of 35°C, the dry air cooler will always be able to maintain 38°C fluid to your process.

They do this by transferring the heat from the hot return fluid that passes through the copper tubes within the heat exchange coil, to the air that passes over the heat exchange coil from operation of the fans on the cooler and this hot air is then discharged to atmosphere, whilst the cooled fluid is returned to your process.

When is a dry air/air blast cooler considered the most suitable product for cooling?

Generally, when you only require your cooling fluid to be maintained at 3°C above the maximum summer ambient within your site location.

This can mean that they are able to achieve as low as 30-38°C cooling fluid supply temperature depending on where your site is within the UK.

What is an adiabatic cooler?

They work in much the same way as a dry air cooler for the majority of the year, but they also come fitted with a mains cold water adiabatic spray bar system that is the final stage of cooling. This is only activated during the warmer times of the year, whereby it emits a mist of water that evaporates into the air stream and can reduce the air on temperature to the heat exchange coils by up to 12°C lower than the dry bulb ambient temperature during typical UK summer conditions.

For example, if the summer temperature within your location reaches a maximum of 35°C, the adiabatic cooler will be able to reduce the air on temperature to 23°C and maintain 26°C fluid to your process.

When is an adiabatic cooler considered the most suitable product for cooling?

Generally, when you require lower temperatures to what a standard dry air cooler can provide, but not as low as when a chiller becomes the preferred option.

Adiabatic coolers are able to achieve as low as anywhere between 23-26°C cooling fluid supply temperature depending on where your site is within the UK.

Another good use for adiabatic coolers is when a dry air cooler footprint is too large for the available space on site. By using an adiabatic cooler at the increased process fluid supply temperatures that a dry air cooler is generally used for, you can decrease the footprint of the unit and ensure that you still maintain the cooling duty and temperature requirements that you need.

What is a free cooler?

A free cooler is in effect a dry air cooler and therefore operates and cools the process fluid in exactly the same way as described above.

Where they differ is that they are used as a complementary product with a chiller.

How does a free cooler work in conjunction with a chiller?

Free coolers utilise the external ambient temperature to reduce the need for using a chiller on a process cooling application.

This saves energy and improves the carbon footprint of your chilled water system.

When ambient air temperatures are below the water return temperature, the free cooler can start to provide partial free cooling and depending upon how efficient it is sized, it can provide 100% free cooling in ambient air temperatures of just 3°C below the water supply temperature.

Depending upon your process temperature requirements, this can typically ensure that your chiller is partially or fully offloaded for up to 90% of the year. This has the added advantage of ensuring that your chiller is not overstressed and only takes over the full cooling requirements at the hottest times of the year, improving the system resilience and the lifespan of your chiller.

When should a free cooler be considered?

Whenever you have a need for all year round cooling, which will be a requirement for nearly all process cooling applications and when your process fluid temperatures are around 10-15°C higher than your minimum ambient temperatures, we can normally design a free cooler to give sufficient energy savings to make it a worthwhile investment, especially if you are running 24 hours a day.

Please contact us and we can fully assess your application and offer a free cooler solution with full technical data, running costs and Return of Investment (ROI) calculations.

What is a cooling tower?

A cooling tower is a product that cools the process fluid either directly (open circuit), or indirectly (closed circuit). They also have fans that are induced draft design (fans on the air outlet side of the unit) or forced draft (air on the air inlet side of the unit).

Our most common cooling tower solutions are induced draft open circuit and so for the purposes of explaining how a cooling tower works, we will use this type of product as the basis.

Warm water from the process is returned to a water distribution system at the top of the tower. The water is distributed over the wet deck fill pack by means of large opening nozzles. Simultaneously, air is drawn in through the air inlet louvers at the base of the tower and travels upward through the wet deck fill opposite to the water flow. A small portion of the water is evaporated which removes the heat from the remaining water. The warm moist air is drawn to the top of the cooling tower by the fan and discharged to the atmosphere. The cooled water drains to the basin at the bottom of the tower and is then pumped back to the process.

As an example, our induced draft open circuit cooling towers can achieve a fluid temperature that is only 3°C above the wet bulb ambient temperature. If the summer temperature within your location reaches a maximum of 35°C dry bulb / 22°C wet bulb, the unit will be able to maintain 25°C fluid to your process.

When is a cooling tower considered the most suitable product for cooling?

Generally, when you require lower temperatures and / or reduced overall cooling plant footprints due to space limitations on site to what a standard dry air cooler or adiabatic cooler can achieve.

Cooling towers are able to achieve as low as anywhere between 21-25°C cooling fluid supply temperature depending on where your site is within the UK.

As the range is very large with multiple options and solutions to suit specific site applications / locations and can be applied to 100,000kW+ cooling applications, please let us know what your requirements are and we can design the most suitable solution to suit.