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.

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