A Water chiller is an industrial type liquid cooling device that offers cold water which is intended to cool various types of industrial equipment. This is a full-blown system consisting of refrigeration equipment; that includes chillers, condensers, pipes and cooling pumps, cooling expansion reservoirs, among many others.
Water is cooled efficiently to certain temperatures, starting at 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit. After reaching the desired cold, the liquid is then pumped into a hydraulic-based circuit to reach industrial equipment.
Another benefit of water cooling is all you need to do is regulate the specific coolant temperature and the technology does the rest to maintain a constant source of cold water. The cooling tower needs to have a continuously adjusted water flow to provide adequate cooling.
What is a water chiller?
A water chiller a mechanical gadget used to move heat from water to a refrigerant in a shut circle framework. Further, the refrigerant is siphoned out to a spot where the waste warmth is moved to the climate. With an assortment of uses in various fields, temperature changes are required to keep up the barometrical temperature inside shut frameworks or conditions. They are fundamentally used to cool hardware and apparatuses in order to lessen mishaps because of warmth. It evacuates heat by fume pressure or assimilation refrigeration cycle. They are utilized in different fields, for example, infusion trim, nourishment and drink, synthetics, laser machine instrument, semiconductors, kick the bucket cutting and the sky is the limit from there.
A water chiller is a central bit of an HVAC system. It removes heat from the structure by cooling and dehumidifying the air. Generally, two sorts of water chillers are used in an HVAC structure: mechanical sort and maintenance type. The mechanical chiller system includes a blower, condenser, evaporator, and other control contraptions. The absorption chiller system doesn’t have a blower yet has a generator and defend it as opposed to it.
Features of Water Chillers
Water-cooled chillers feature a water-cooled condenser connected with a cooling tower. They have commonly been used for medium and large installations that have a sufficient water supply. Water-cooled chillers can produce more constant performance for commercial and industrial air conditioning because of the relative independence to fluctuations of the ambient temperature. Water-cooled chillers range in size from small 20-ton capacity models to several thousand-ton models that cool the world’s largest facilities such as airports, shopping malls and other facilities.
A typical water-cooled chiller uses recirculating condenser water from a cooling tower to condense the refrigerant. A water-cooled chiller contains a refrigerant dependent on the entering condenser water temperature (and flow rate), which functions in relation to the ambient wet-bulb temperature. Since the wet-bulb temperature is always lower than the dry-bulb temperature, the refrigerant condensing temperature (and pressure) in a water-cooled chiller can often operate significantly lower than an air-cooled chiller. Thus, water-cooled chillers can operate more efficiently.
Water-cooled chillers typically reside indoors in an environment protected from the elements. Hence, water-cooled chiller can offer a longer lifespan. Water-cooled chillers typically represent the only option for larger installations. The additional cooling tower system will require additional installation expense and maintenance as compared to air-cooled chillers.
Applications of water chillers
In industrial application, chilled water or other liquid from the chiller is pumped through process or laboratory equipment. Industrial chillers are used for controlled cooling of products, mechanisms and factory machinery in a wide range of industries. They are often used in the plastic industries, injection and blow molding, metal working cutting oils, welding equipment, die-casting and machine tooling, chemical processing, pharmaceutical formulation, food and beverage processing, paper and cement processing, vacuum systems, X-ray diffraction, power supplies and power generation stations, analytical equipment, semiconductors, compressed air and gas cooling. They are also used to cool high-heat specialized items such as MRI machines and lasers, and in hospitals, hotels and campuses.
Chillers for industrial applications can be centralized, where a single chiller serves multiple cooling needs, or decentralized where each application or machine has its own chiller. Each approach has its advantages. It is also possible to have a combination of both centralized and decentralized chillers, especially if the cooling requirements are the same for some applications or points of use, but not all.
Decentralized chillers are usually small in size and cooling capacity, usually from 0.2 to 10 short tons (0.179 to 8.929 long tons; 0.181 to 9.072 t). Centralized chillers generally have capacities ranging from ten tons to hundreds or thousands of tons.
Chilled water is used to cool and dehumidify air in mid- to large-size commercial, industrial, and institutional (CII) facilities. Water chillers can be 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 higher efficiencies than air-cooled chillers but lower than water-cooled chillers.
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 evaporative cooled chillers are 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. Evaporative 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, replace or supplement cooling towers. The deep water source cooling system in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is an example. 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 effectiveness is possible.
