Energies (Mar 2020)
Formulation of Coefficient of Performance Characteristics of Water-cooled Chillers and Evaluation of Composite COP for Combined Chillers
Abstract
The Coefficient of Performance of an ordinary water-cooled chiller is presented as a relationship with the chiller load factor and cooling water temperature. However, the cooling water temperature fluctuates according to the processed heat of the cooling tower originating in the cooling energy of the chiller and to the outside temperature and humidity. It is therefore difficult to obtain the cooling water temperature under the processed-heat and weather conditions at the time of evaluation. This, in turn, makes it difficult to determine the Coefficient of Performance of a water-cooled chiller at the evaluation time. In this research, we formulated the Coefficient of Performance of a water-cooled chiller as a relationship with the chiller load factor and specific enthalpy of outside air. Specifically, we used the Number of Transfer Units (NTU) model of a cooling tower to calculate the cooling water temperature corresponding to the cooling-tower load factor targeting a counterflow cooling tower for a range of values of outside-air specific enthalpy. This technique makes it possible to evaluate the Coefficient of Performance of a water-cooled chiller without determining the cooling water temperature. Furthermore, for the case of installing multiple units of chillers, it becomes possible to calculate the composite Coefficient of Performance of those chillers without having to determine the cooling water temperatures for the different operation load factors of those chillers. Moreover, since the composite Coefficient of Performance can be calculated by combining the different installation capacities of these chillers, the energy consumption of multiple chillers can be calculated at the basic planning stage.
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