With recent price rises, the demand for ever greater energy efficiency is relentless.
Industrial operations often need cooling, which can use a lot of electricity. There are ways for industrial companies to reduce energy consumption or use surplus heat more intelligently.
We will focus on a few ways to save money and energy in the medium and long term.
011. Integrated “free” cooling (freecooling)
Some cooling systems can use cold outside air to maintain process temperature. When the air temperature is low enough, these systems switch off the compressors, which are the biggest electricity consumers in the system. The savings depend on the temperature regime, but savings of 50% or more are achievable.
022. Upgrading an old chiller with a dry cooler
An existing chiller without free cooling can also be upgraded with an additional “dry” cooler and automatic controls so that it works in a similar way to free cooling.
033. Heat recovery
Surplus heat from production can also be used. Normally, water chillers reject surplus process heat to the air. Instead of wasting that energy, there is an option that lets us use water heated up to 55 °C for space heating, domestic hot water or other uses.
044. Tandem compressor technology
To increase efficiency, several compressors can also be connected to the same refrigeration circuit. When you need only part of the chiller’s capacity, you run just one compressor, and so on up to full capacity – using energy only for as many compressors as current cooling demand requires. For example, when only one compressor is running, it can use the entire condenser. This lets the unit run more efficiently at part load than a comparable unit without such a configuration.
There are, of course, other ways to achieve greater energy efficiency – these were just some of the most common. Energy is essential, energy sources keep getting more expensive, and that is why it is vital to use energy rationally and intelligently.
