INDUSTRIAL CONDENSING UNITS

On September 13, 1833, 100 tons of ice arrived by ship in Calcutta, India after a four-month journey. This feat was accomplished by packing ice blocks together in the insulated hold of the ship. The hold was insulated with wood planks, hay, and refuse from tanners’ pits. Since there was no refrigerated shipping, improved packing technology was the only way to reduce the amount of ice lost in shipping, which was significant: 180 tons of ice were initially packed into the hold of the ship. Businesses have always needed a way to keep things cool. Today, industrial and commercial chillers are the silent workhorses of commerce and industry. So many industries use chillers in their manufacturing processes as well as for safe handling and storage of food, pharmaceuticals, and beverages that they are ubiquitous. Chillers control temperatures in heat sensitive data centers, and maintain ice skating and hockey rinks. The ability to control temperatures is crucial to business now just as it was in 1833. It’s crucial to have chillers that are adequate for the processes that they are used for, and there are a number of elements that come into play. Cost is obviously one factor that needs consideration, but there are others that may make a more expensive unit more economical in the long run. Users need to know what cooling capacity they need, the temperature ranges involved, heat load of application, and piping type. Keep in mind that cooling capacity specifications are measured in ideal testing conditions. It’s not that the testing is inaccurate, but that the controlled heat load used to test the cooling capacity is applied to a closed loop that doesn’t have the fluid volume of a real world operation. Therefore, industry sources recommend increasing your chiller’s capacity by around 25% over your estimated need. This increase absorbs environmental losses and other hard-to-measure aspects of a real application and ensures the needed cooling capacity will actually be available. Another consideration of importance is any chiller system’s scalability. Will your operation remain the same? How soon could you theoretically outgrow your current chiller and what would be the cost of replacing it? Here you have to keep in mind not only the cost of the physical replacement, but compatibility with current applications, necessary upgrades to other machinery or facilities, and possible reduced production capacity during the upgrade. These are a few reasons that it may make sense to look into our selection of rental chillers. With a rental chiller, you are able to try out the chiller that most closely matches your needed cooling capacity. If it doesn’t work as needed due to some unaccounted for environmental losses in your application, you can exchange it for the needed capacity. In addition, you can afford the recommended 25% padding of your cooling capacity. The same goes for scalability: if you find yourself needing more cooling capacity, you can get another rental chiller that meets your new needs. The savings in these instances are substantial, running into thousands of dollars. Another area of huge savings is the lack of costs associated with any necessary repairs or ongoing maintenance of the cooler. Repairs are costly not only in terms of parts and labor for fixing the cooler itself, but also in downtime. Adding maintenance of a purchased cooler to your current maintenance staff’s work load is sure to add additional man-hour costs, whether from additional (possibly overtime) hours for current maintenance staff or the need to hire additional maintenance staff. J.C. Younger Company has a great range of rental chillers suitable for industries that include bakeries, food production facilities, breweries and wineries, medical and pharmaceutical facilities, and more. Contact us to discuss your industrial application chiller needs.  

Picking the right chiller for your application means exploring many options. They have a variety of features for cooling, and each mechanism has its own advantages. In order to decide on specifications for the chiller you need, you will have to develop a passing understanding of the features involved. A good place to start is a common type of cooling mechanism called a condenser. Basics Of Condensers In Chillers Frequently, chillers use units called condensers to cool the refrigerant (the chemical used to take heat from the cooling part of the machine.) Condensers are a type of heat exchanger. They get their name because they use a medium to absorb heat from a vapor of a refrigerant, which causes the vapor to condense to a (cooler) liquid. They generally sit around a compressor, which takes the now liquid refrigerant and pressurizes it. This pushes the refrigerant through the coils where the liquid will absorb heat from the chiller, causing it to become a vapor that will go through the process all over again. What Is An Air-Cooled Condensing Unit There are a couple of types of condensers, classified by the type of medium used to cool the vapor. One common type in industrial applications is air cooled condensing units, also known by the acronym ACCU. Air-cooled condensers push or pull air around a series of finned metal tubes. These tubes are full of hot gasses, which the air cools, causing the vapor to form a condensate on the tubing that drips into a reservoir or out a drain. The air, now hot, leaves the chiller. The industrial machines will use fans to pull cool air from outside and eject hot air from the chiller. You may see some small condensers using gravity to move the air. Designs can come with horizontal or vertical discharge vents, and this will contribute to the shape of the chiller and where you can put them. What Is A Water-Cooled Condensing Unit This type of condenser uses tubes of water to do the same job as the air in the air-cooled designs. Hot refrigerant vapor goes in sealed shells, where tubes or coils of cold water are. The cold water sucks up the heat. Chillers can also use devices called evaporators to remove heat, and then use the water-cooled condensers to take heat out of the evaporators, letting them go back to cooling the machines. Advantages ACCU’s have a few benefits. The most obvious is that the units require no water to work. You don’t have to worry about adding anything to it, and you don’t have to worry about the condensing medium freezing. No scale will develop on the tubes, either. It is also generally easy to install and keep clean. They can be meant for outdoor installation. Water-cooled condensers, however, don’t have to worry about access to fresh air to keep cool, and they can be more compact in design. There is also the noise factor: there are no fans buzzing in the background during the work day. You can use lower condensing pressures in the machine, and you have more control over the pressure as well. Water-cooled chillers do well installed inside, and the condenser can be outside, in a separate loop. Some chillers use water towers to release outside the heat the water takes in. We have a variety of chillers to choose from, some of which use water-cooled condensing units, and some of which use air-cooled condensing units. If you need to rent or buy a chiller of either type, contact us. We have 60 years of experience in finding the right chiller for customers.