Chiller with Free Cooling: advantages and features -
July 29 2022

Chiller with Free Cooling: advantages and features

Chiller with Free Cooling – how sweet the words sound for company owners, chief Power Engineers. Because if you produce products that need to be cooled even to zero degrees, you have the opportunity to use a lower ambient temperature for your own purposes without additional electricity costs!

You may ask, how is this possible? But to do this, wise engineers came up with the idea of building another capacitor into the chiller: just not with Freon, but filled with glycol! The type is the same as a radiator in a car, cooled by a fan and cold wind flows.

чиллер с фрикулингом

Fig. 1 scheme of operation of the chiller with friculating

In the summer, of course, such a trick will not work – and yet you will have to pay for electricity. But as soon as the leaves from the trees start to fall and you hear the autumn coolness, the friculing mode will turn on more and more often as the cold weather approaches (see Figure 2). The colder it gets, the more electricity you save. Friction is controlled by 2 tools: the first is the brain, the role of which is assumed by the functions of the controller, and the role of the hand is performed by a three – way valve that regulates the supply of glycol from the heat exchanger to cool the heated liquid.

естественное охлаждение

Fig. 2 freecooling temperature chart

But I’m afraid this information wasn’t enough for you to understand how natural cooling occurs. So let’s compare how a regular chiller works and a chiller with a freecooling function. In a conventional chiller, the coolant enters a plate or shell-and-tube heat exchanger, where energy is exchanged and the warm coolant gives its heat to Freon through plates or copper tubes in the heat exchanger.

Then the cooled propylene glycol or water goes to the consumer and then, heated again, returns to the chiller heat exchanger and the process is repeated. All this time, to maintain the set temperature, the compressors will operate at the load level.

Chillers with the function heated from the consumer, glycol is not returned to the heat exchanger in an additional condenser or, more correctly, a draycooler. Usually, the draycooler is installed in the second row behind the capacitor. And the control of the liquid supply to the natural cooling system is carried out by a three-way valve, which, in turn, is controlled by a controller. Controller collects information from the outside air temperature and inlet temperature sensors in the controller and regulates the operation of the 3-way valve and the rotation speed of the fans. The colder and greater the difference between the liquid to be cooled and the outdoor temperature, the more efficient the friculating is and the more the coolant is passed through the draycooler. Efficiency can be from 0 to 100%.

What manufacturers make friculating chillers and how to recognize them? Most often, factories indicate the presence of freecooling on the nameplate with the designation AC.

Almost all manufacturers have friculating chillers in their assortment. In our warehouse, for example, most often presented: Hiross, Emerson, Climaveneta, BlueBox, Uniflair, Hi Ref, Carrier, Trane.

Where is it profitable to use freecooling? After all, the planet is big – there are places where it is very hot all year round and freecooling there simply will not work, because if it is +23 outside even in winter, and you need to cool the beer to +2, then nothing will work, take out your wallet and pay the bills!

For example, in the northern latitudes: there the chiller itself is not really needed, rather heat pumps and boilers are needed, so as not to get cold! Below is a diagram of the latitudes that are optimal for using freecooling.

Fig. 3 scheme of latitudes optimal for freecooling use

The last and most interesting thing: who will be interested in such savings and does it really justify its funds?
Our chillers work in the production of beer, plastic, dairy products, chemicals, lemonades.

A list of industries for which freecooling will be the best option:

  • At industrial enterprises for the production of plastics.
  • In the chemical industry for water cooling.
  • Oil refining industry.
  • Mechanical engineering (cooling of equipment, machine tools, oils and liquids for grinding).
  • In the food industry (for cooling butter, milk, and other products).

We hope that the information was useful for you, and the search for the right liquid cooler for your production will be faster and clearer. In addition, our specialists can always help you choose the right option depending on the type of production and the parameters you specify.

In the catalog of our website, you can choose a chiller with freecooling of different capacities by clicking on the link: https: https://evroprom.com/catalog/water-chillers/f/1/ .