What is a chiller ?
May 17, 2021
What is a Chiller?
Industrial
water chillers are used in a variety of applications where chilled water or
liquid are circulated through process equipment. Commonly used to cool products
and machinery, water chillers are used in a multitude of different applications
including injection molding, tool and die cutting, food and beverage,
chemicals, lasers, machine tool, semi-conductors and more.
The function
of an industrial chiller is to move heat from one location (usually process
equipment or product) to another place (usually the air outside the
manufacturing facility). It is very common to use water or a water/glycol
solution to transfer the heat to and from the chiller which may require the
process chiller to have a reservoir and pumping system. Regardless of your
industry and process, making sure that you have sufficient cooling is critical
to productivity and cost savings.
Industrial chillers are one type of
chillers, and chillers can be divided into air-cooled chillers and water-cooled
chillers.
Water chiller is a kind of water cooling
equipment, which can provide constant temperature, constant current and
constant pressure cooling equipment. The principle of the chiller is to inject
a certain amount of water into the internal water tank of the machine, and the
water is cooled by the chiller refrigeration system, and then a water pump
inside the machine injects low-temperature frozen water into the equipment that
needs to be cooled, and the chilled water will heat the internal heat of the
machine. Take it away and return the high-temperature hot water to the water
tank to cool down again. In this way, it is circulated and exchanged and cooled
to achieve the effect of cooling the equipment.
In industrial applications, chilled water
or other liquid cooling pumps are passed through processes or laboratory
equipment. Industrial chillers are used in various industries to control the
cooling of products, mechanisms and factory machinery. They are commonly used
in injection and blow molding in the plastics industry, metal processing
cutting oils, welding equipment, die-casting and machining, chemical processing,
pharmaceutical formulation, food and beverage processing, paper making, cement
processing, vacuum systems, X-ray diffraction, electric power Supply and power
stations, analytical equipment, semiconductors, compressed air and gas cooling.
They are also used to cool high heat energy, such as MRI machines and laser
specialized engineering projects, and in hospitals, hotels and campuses. The
chillers for industrial applications can be centralized, and each chiller can
meet multiple needs for cooling, or be dispersed in each application or device
with its own chiller. Each method has its advantages. It may also have a
combination of central and decentralized chillers, especially when the cooling
requirements are the same for certain applications or use points, but not all.
Distributed chillers have a small area
(cooling capacity) usually from 0.2 tons to 10 tons. Central chillers generally
have a capacity ranging from 10 tons to hundreds or thousands of tons.
Chilled water is used to cool and
dehumidify the air in large-scale commercial, industrial and institutional
alliance (CII) facilities. The chiller can be water-cooled, air-cooled, cooled
or evaporatively. The use of water-cooled chillers is incorporated into cooling
towers, which improves the cooling' thermodynamic efficiency compared to
air-cooled chillers. This is due to the high temperature or the wet bulb
temperature of the nearby air, rather than repelling the high, sometimes much
higher, dry bulb temperature. Evaporatively chillers provide better efficiency
than air cooling, but lower than cold water.
Several aspects of the chiller should be
paid attention to:
1. Selection of model size of chiller for
injection molding machine
When used as a mold cooling of an injection
molding machine, it can be calculated according to the injection volume of the
injection molding machine. Generally, a 1HP chiller is used for every 6 ounces
of injection volume. For example, the customer’s factory is 100T (5.5OZS)×3;
150T(12OZS)×4 units; 200T(23OZS)×3 units; the required chiller size is
(5.5×3+12×4+23×3)/6=22.25, that is, a 25HP chiller. When used for cooling of
other equipment, it depends on the specific flow rate of the cooling water
circulation.
2. Selection of the insulation water tank
and water pump of the chiller
Sometimes according to the actual
situation of the customer's factory, the box-type chiller may also require an
external pump. At this time, the additional pump model must have the same power
as the pump that comes with the chiller. If the 10HP box-type chiller comes
with a pump power of 2HP, when the pump is added, it must also be 2HP.
3. The temperature of the return water
of the chiller should not be higher than 40 degrees. The higher the return
water temperature, the greater the damage to the compressor.
Scope of application
Plastic industry: Accurately control the
mold temperature of various plastic processing, shorten the plastic molding
cycle, and ensure the stability of product quality.
Electronics industry: Stabilize the
molecular structure of electronic components on the production line, improve
the qualification rate of electronic components, and apply to the ultrasonic
cleaning industry to effectively prevent the volatilization of expensive
cleaning agents and the damage caused by volatilization.
Electroplating industry: control the
electroplating temperature, increase the density and smoothness of the plated
parts, shorten the electroplating cycle, increase production efficiency, and
improve product quality.
Machinery industry: Control the oil
temperature of the oil pressure system, stabilize the oil temperature and oil
pressure, extend the oil quality use time, improve the efficiency of mechanical
lubrication, and reduce wear.
Construction industry: supply chilled water
for concrete, make the molecular structure of concrete suitable for
construction purposes, and effectively enhance the hardness and toughness of
concrete.
Vacuum coating: control the temperature of
the vacuum coating machine to ensure the high quality of the coated parts.
Food industry: used for high-speed cooling
after food processing to adapt to packaging requirements. In addition, there
are control of the temperature of fermented food and so on.
Pharmaceutical industry: In the
pharmaceutical industry, it is mainly used to control the temperature control
of fermented drugs. Pharmaceutical companies should make full use of chiller
equipment, continue to strengthen technological innovation based on their
advantages, and enhance the cost-effectiveness of chillers, so as to better
serve the pharmaceutical sector.