Chilled Water Systems

Chilled water systems are used to provide air conditioning comfort to the occupants of commercial buildings and industrial facilities and to support industrial processes. Chilled water systems often account for a major portion of the overall energy consumed. New technologies can be applied to reduce this cost by more than half.

Along with the "Air Handling Systems" course, this one-day seminar provides insight into these issues and provides a foundation for understanding central plant air conditioning systems. This course emphasizes strategies for owning and operating an energy efficient system, and explores the components of typical systems, controls and operating concepts, and water conservation issues and opportunities. This class discusses chiller machinery, refrigerant options, the impact of cooling towers, using variable speed on compressors, and variable chilled water flow. It includes a case study that goes through the process of selecting an energy efficient chiller.

Alternative version: Choosing High-Efficiency Chillers

When choosing a new chiller, there are dozens-if not hundreds-of factors that affect efficiency. Choosing a new chilled water system can be challenging-it requires considerations for energy efficiency, refrigerant selection, drive train, system configuration, and more.

This presentation covers basic chiller types, and the incremental costs and savings of upgrading from standard chillers to the most efficient.

Alternative version: Comparing Air & Water-Cooled Chillers

Chilled water systems are used to provide air conditioning for commercial buildings and industrial facilities and to support industrial processes. This class presents an overview of chiller systems including basic components and operations, sizing air-conditioning loads, air-conditioning system concepts, common system configurations, measuring chiller efficiency, improving chiller efficiency, AC cost and efficiency considerations, compressors, condensers, cooling towers, and water treatment options. This class compares air-cooled and water-cooled chiller systems and discusses the pros and cons for each type of system.

Alternative version: Comparing Electric & Gas Chillers

This course provides information that will assist commercial building customers with the selection of water chillers, in the range of 100 to 2000 tons of cooling. This course address the selection of chillers with either gas or electric prime movers. Electric systems frequently compete with natural-gas driven technologies, and competitive issues are presented. Major course topics include market breakdown of installed chiller base and recent sales trends, technology descriptions for both electric and gas chillers, manufacturers and product offerings, selection and optimization criteria, chiller economics.