Chiller Performance Surveys

     CHILLER EFFICIENCY & PROVISIONS REFRIGERATION SURVEYS   

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Imagine being able to measure the exact performance of your chillers. Can any of your contractors tell you exactly how many kW of cooling its producing? Let’s say its a 150kW Capacity chiller. Wouldn’t you want to know if its actually producing that much cooling at the most efficient operation. ie you want the most amount of cooling for the lowest cost possible. Inefficient systems require more load on the engines and ultimately lead to high fuel costs. Our test equipment allows us to do exactly that.

Site surveys and equipment inspections are a great way to understand the condition of your HVAC systems. The marine environment can be extremely harsh and it’s important to know when a system needs to be upgraded or when it simply needs maintenance.

Our site surveys will provide you with a clear understanding of the condition of your HVAC equipment. We can offer advice for ongoing maintenance and provide a full report on the operating condition of each piece of equipment with guidance on how to improve the unit’s performance. By measuring operating pressures, temperatures, amperage, cooling capacity, superheat and subcooling, we can determine the “health” of the unit and make recommendations on how to improve its efficiency.

Provides owners with state of the art energy reporting and experts with hard facts on performance for plant optimisation, trouble-shooting and benchmarking.                       

The benefits of this service includes:

  • Optimisation of chiller performance
  • Reduced fuel costs
  • Increased equipment life
  • Reduced breakdowns
  • Pro-active maintenance
  • Identifying faults before they happen
  • Remote monitoring
  • Alarm announcement to mobile phone or Monitoring system
  • Indirect automatic leak detection system that meets the requirements of the FGas Regulations

Performance Dashboard and Energy Reporting

ClimaCheck offer state of the art visualisation of performance that give early warning if the energy consumption is increasing or validate if optimisation measures give desired savings. ClimaCheck will pinpoint any problems – System Efficiency Index (SEI) and Sub efficiencies high-light deviation from optimal performance and allow benchmarking.

 What values are recorded and what values are calculated?

ClimaCheck records the following:

  • Suction temperature at Compressor inlet
  • Suction pressure at Compressor outlet
  • Suction temperature at Compressor inlet
  • Discharge temperature at Compressor outlet
  • Liquid temperature upstream of expansion device
  • Voltage on all three phases
  • Current on all three phases

The following items are recorded, these being extremely useful to see in order to determine the performance of Heat Exchangers on the secondary fluid side, but are not required by ClimaCheck:

  • Inlet temperature to Evaporator
  • Outlet temperature from Evaporator
  • Inlet temperature to Condenser
  • Outlet temperature from Condenser
  • The following values are calculated:
  • Power input – kW (per phase and total)
  • Power factor
  • Refrigerant mass flow rate – kg/s
  • Cooling capacity – kW
  • Heat of rejection – kW
  • Compressor isentropic efficiency – %
  • System COP – cooling
  • System COP – heating
  • Superheat – K
  • Sub-cooling – K
    ClimaCheck can also calculate and display secondary fluid mass flow rates.

Applications

  • Commissioning/warranty inspections
  • Performance Inspections
  • Unbiased performance validation
  • Energy optimisation
  • Troubleshooting and fault correction
  • Extending plant life
  • Preventive maintenance and service
  • continuous monitoring

ClimaCheck analysis provide accurate data for:

  • Expansion valve function/adjustment
  • Precision refrigerant charging
  • Compressor efficiency
  • Evaluating heat exchanger performance and secondary flow rates
  • Verifi cation of control functions and system protection
  • Evaluation of Performance:

Capacity, COP/EER and electrical power/power factor

Measurements

    The ClimaCheck method measures key parameters in the refrigeration system and precisely analyses the process.

A basic process requires:
Temperature

  • Compressor discharge line
  • Liquid refrigerant before expansion device
  • Compressor suction line
  • Evaporator entering and leaving water / air
  • Condenser entering and leaving water / air

Pressure

  • High and low compressor pressures

Electrical measurements

  • Current, voltage, power factor, active power

Results

The above measurements allow all performance parameters to be calculated and displayed, including:

  • Cooling and heating capacity (+-7%)
  • Electrical power input (+-2%)
  • Coefficient of Performance / EER (+-5%)
  • Compressor isentropic efficiency
  • Evaporating / condensing
  • pressure and temperature
  • Discharge temperature
  • Superheat / sub-cooling
  • Entering and leaving evaporator air / water temperature
  • Entering and leaving condenser air / water temperature
  • Temperature differences and flow rates in evaporator / condenser

Measure Important Operating Conditions

Easy To View Performance Indicators

Sample Data – 24 Hrs Pre-optimization

Sample Data – 24 Hrs Post-optimization 

  • Lower discharge temperature
  • Greatly reduced system short cycling
  • Demand stabilized at 48kW for majority of operating period

 Energy Optimisation             

      TESTIMONIAL

We requested Stuart from Tradewinds to attend our vessel after seeing his work on LinkedIn. At the time we had no support company for our refrigeration/AC equipment and it was something I wanted to set up. Stuart attended for a week to carry out an overall efficiency survey of our equipment, studying the original designs, navigating the un-documented modifications, fully familiarizing himself with the systems and carrying out the efficiency survey. Stuart found a number of deficiencies and found the cause of an ongoing issue that had one of our chiller compressors tripping un expectantly. We currently operate in an environment beyond the design limitations of our system (35 degree C seawater) really testing our plant, failures is not an option over the summer so it is vital the system is running well. Stuart looked into improvements on our request finding that modifications in the past re-gassing from R404a to R134a was a mistake, reducing our overall capacity to 67% of the original, changing to R407C can bring this back to 90% of original, the savings in fuel would be significant in only a short space of time. After this survey Stuart and Tradewinds are now in a position to assist us remotely and will be my first point of call for future works and refits. I was surprised at the issues we had been running with unknowingly and after correcting these issues how improved our plant is. I would highly recommend this survey for anyone operating AC and refrigeration plants, Stuart is a natural teacher, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him on the systems.

Andrew Green

2nd Engineer

M/Y Luna