How Air Conditioning Work

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Chiller

A chiller is a machine that removes heat from a liquid via a vapor-compression or absorption refrigeration cycle. A vapor-compression water chiller comprises the 4 major components of the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle (compressor, evaporator, condenser, and some form of metering device). These machines can implement a variety of refrigerants. Absorption chillers utilize water as the refrigerant and rely on the strong affinity between the water and a lithium bromide solution to achieve a refrigeration effect. Most often, pure water is chilled, but this water may also contain a percentage of glycol and/or corrosion inhibitors; other fluids such as thin oils can be chilled as well.

Chilled water is used to cool and dehumidify air in mid- to large-size commercial, industrial, and institutional (CII) facilities. Water chillers can be either water cooled, air-cooled, or evaporatively cooled. Water-cooled chillers incorporate the use of cooling towers which improve the chillers' thermodynamic effectiveness as compared to air-cooled chillers. This is due to heat rejection at or near the air's wet-bulb temperature rather than the higher, sometimes much higher, dry-bulb temperature. Evaporatively cooled chillers offer efficiencies better than air cooled, but lower than water cooled.


Water cooled chillers are typically intended for indoor installation and operation, and are cooled by a separate condenser water loop and connected to outdoor cooling towers to expel heat to the atmosphere.

Air Cooled and Evaporatively Cooled chillers are usually intended for outdoor installation and operation. Air cooled machines are directly cooled by ambient air being mechanically circulated directly through the machine's condenser coil to expel heat to the atmosphere. Evaporatively cooled machines are similar, except they implement a mist of water over the condenser coil to aid in condenser cooling, making the machine more efficient than a traditional air cooled machine. No remote cooling tower is typically required with either of these types of packaged air cooled or evaporatively cooled chillers.

Where available, cold water readily available in nearby water bodies might be used directly for cooling, or to replace or supplement cooling towers. The Deep Lake Water Cooling System in Toronto, Canada, is an example. It dispensed with the need for cooling towers, with a significant cut in carbon emissions and energy consumption. It uses cold lake water to cool the chillers, which in turn are used to cool city buildings via a district cooling system. The return water is used to warm the city's drinking water supply which is desirable in this cold climate. Whenever a chiller's heat rejection can be used for a productive purpose, in addition to the cooling function, very high thermal effectivenesses are possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment

DIY Ductwork Installation

Typical Leak Search and Repair on Commercial A/C - Part I