Performance
Your cooling equipment is primary purpose is to cool, so why focus on performance?
- To reduce the electricity, water and chemical costs! When a cooling unit is built, it has been designed to cool at a specified rate, sometimes referred to as maximum heat rejection or design duty. Your brand-new cooling unit has been installed in your factory – cool store – building.
The first day the cooling unit is turned on will be its most effective day for it to cool and perform. On day one the brand-new cooling unit is at 100% cooling performance. It is also at 100% power consumption efficiency.
What happens after day one?
The cooling performance starts to drop off slowly but surely. Why?
Cooling tower fill pack must be in a good condition to effectively cool to 100% capacity.
Dirty – scaled – fowled – damaged – falling apart is costing the owner a fortune in excessive electricity costs.
Blocked water distribution nozzles reduce cooling performance significantly – No water cover = No cooling.
The internal tubes of fluid coolers must be cleaned to ensure 100% cooling performance
Cooling equipment has some standard components
- Heat transfer medium (coil or fill pack)
- A fan to move air over the heat transfer medium (coil or fill pack)
- Water distribution system to increase the heat rejection, increase the cooling efficiency & distribute water over the heat transfer medium (coil or fill pack)
Cooling performance is decreased by the following factors.
- Dirt – dust – scale
- Bacteria – biofilm – slime – mould
- Corrosion – erosion
- Pollution – chemical attack
- Wear – tear – damage – faults
- Mechanical faults – electrical faults
From day one, the operation of cooling equipment is put into extreme stress by all the above factors.
Without maintenance, the cooling performance decreases.
Dirty coils cause a significant drop in
the cooling performance. Huge increase in electricity costs.
Clean coils give the owner 100% cooling performance.
Save money on electricity.
What happens when the cooling performance decreases?
- The electrical power bill cost goes up.
- The cooling equipment has to run longer and harder to do the work that was easy on day one installation.
- Wear and tear increase so the cooling equipment life expectancy decreases too quickly.
- Bacteria, biofilm, slime and mould causes corrosion, causing life expectancy to decrease.
- The cooling units do not cool the equipment, rooms, or buildings they were designed to cool when at 100% performance.
- Refrigerant gas leaks due to excessive heat
- Chiller failure – high temperature alarms – high temperature complaints from people – produce damage – plant shutdown.
Poor cooling equipment performance costs you MONEY
The hidden costs
- Excessive power bills.
- Unhappy clients in retail facilities.
- Unhappy tenants in buildings.
- Equipment failure way to short of the expected life span.
- Produce spoilage and poor shelf life.
- Water and chemical leaks into the environment.
- Excessive parts replacement cost.
- Increased chemical costs.
- Increased water usage costs.
- Cost to re-gas coils.
Maintenance and cleaning are critical to ensure cooling equipment runs as close as possible to the meet the 100% performance mark. Cooling equipment refers to cooling towers, fan coil unit, penthouse unit, evaporators, condensers, fluid coolers, alcove units, air handling units, hybrid coolers and air cooled units.