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Energy Efficiency in Air Cooled Chillers
By Daniel Rollston
An air cooled water chiller removes heat from water or other process fluid by use of a refrigeration
system that then dissipates that same heat into the air. The energy efficiency is given by the chiller
COP.
The chiller operates by using the change of state of a refrigerant gas which when forced through an
orifice at high pressure changes state from a liquid to a gas, absorbing heat through the chiller
evaporator heat exchanger. This cold expanded gas then travels to the chiller refrigeration compressor
where it is compressed into a hot, dense gas and pumped to the chiller condenser. The volume that
the compressor can pump, the refrigeration gas used, and the operating conditions determine how
much heat is removed.
At the air cooled chiller condenser the refrigerant is forced by the compressor through smaller copper
tubes which have thin aluminum fins mechanically bonded to them. Ambient air is then forced through
the condenser coil by the chiller fans. This causes the hot refrigerant gas to condense into a liquid,
changing state, and releasing the heat that the gas collected at the chiller evaporator. The waste heat
is then carried away into the ambient air by the fans. The liquid is then forced through the orifice and
the process starts again.
The heart of the chiller is the refrigeration compressor. This is a pump that uses electrical energy to
pump refrigerant around the system. Depending on the application like size or operating temperature, a
different compressor pumping technology is used. Smaller chillers use re