Industrial process chillers are not universal. Instead, they are custom-designed engineered solutions tailored to suit your unique application requirements. Skilled engineers review each system to ensure it’s customized to your operational needs, addressing specific factors for your application, such as varying heat loads, narrow temperature requirements, corrosive fluid, near freezing water applications, extreme fluid temperatures, ambient conditions, and corrosive environments.
This post details the engineering expertise that goes into every process chiller to demonstrate what you can expect when designing your system, including:
- System analysis
- Layout
- Custom controls
- Redundancy
- Capacity control
- Energy efficiency
Keep reading to learn more about the role of engineering in designing high-performance process chillers to ensure your system meets your unique application requirements.
System analysis
Before designing a high-performance process chiller, engineers perform a system analysis to maximize efficiency. This process includes system sizing and component selection. For instance, your application may require an upsized evaporator or a specific expansion valve to ensure it runs efficiently. System analysis can also assess glycol correction factors and identify specialized components necessary to create the ideal custom-engineered solution for your unique process cooling needs.
Layout
The layout of your space is another factor engineers explore when designing a custom solution. For instance, sometimes equipment must squeeze into a tight location or drop in to replace an existing system. Other times, an industrial process chiller may require a complete custom layout. In these cases, engineers consider these variables to ensure the metal is drawn, designed, lasered, bent, and assembled according to your layout requirements.
Custom controls
When engineers design process chillers, they can program custom controls to give you tighter process control. Micro control systems (MCS) microprocessors allow you to monitor or adjust the system settings with the click of a mouse. For even greater ease, engineers can program the ability for you to have remote access, allowing you to log into your system from anywhere. You can even receive email or text alerts in case of an alarm, helping you address possible system vulnerabilities early.
Redundancy
Your redundancy needs are another design aspect engineers consider when designing a customized process chiller systems to ensure your product is always chilled when you need it. Redundancy is especially important for minimizing downtime in medical, cannabis, food processing, brewery, winery, dairy, low-temperature, and other industrial applications.
Highly skilled engineers can help you determine whether your system needs full capacity redundancy, dual refrigeration circuits, multi refrigeration circuits, full electrical isolation, dual control systems, or auto changeover pumps to maximize uptime.
Capacity control
Many industrial processes have intermittent heavy-to-low load operations. If yours is one of them, engineers help ensure your chiller is designed to meet the changing demands of your application. They specialize in determining the best capacity controls to optimize your system, including incorporating digital scrolls, compressor unloading, or electronic hot gas bypass. These design considerations can help your chiller system operate from 17-100% of available cooling.
Energy efficiency enhancements
Finally, the engineering phase of designing a high-performance process chiller includes energy efficiency considerations to help you reduce energy output and minimize operational costs. For instance, engineers can design your system with energy-efficient options such as EC condenser fans, electronic expansion valves (EEVs), multiple refrigerant circuits, economizer/subcooler, flooded head pressure, heat reclaim options, and variable frequency drives (VFD).
For over 50 years, we’ve designed custom-engineered solutions to address unique application requirements and operational preferences. Our highly skilled engineers have what it takes to ensure your system is precisely the solution needed to keep your equipment running strong. In addition, our high-performance process chillers have a proven 99.4% uptime rate, helping to maximize productivity and profits. Ready to put our experienced engineering team to work for you? Contact us or request a quote to begin designing a custom system for your operation.