Importance of Screw Chillers in Every Day Cooling

To enable a conductive environment for work, play and entertainment, comfort cooling has become a norm nowadays with building engineers making provisions for air-conditioning in the planning stages itself. Depending on the application, scale of operation and availability of water and power the type of chiller is picked.

Chillers cool the atmospheric air that comes in contact with it. The low temperatures are produced by a compressional or absorption refrigeration cycle.

In the case of industrial applications chillers are either centralized where one chiller serves many cooling needs or decentralized where separate smaller chillers are used for different uses.

Applications of Screw Chillers

•        In the manufacturing industry they cool processes where excess heat is produced like in injection and blow molding in plastics.
•        They cool machines to prevent damage to machine parts.
•        They are used in rubber, chemical processing, welding, cement processing, and pharmaceuticals and in machine tooling industries.
•        In medical applications they help cool Magnetic Resonace Imaging machines, lasers and other bio-medical equipment.
•        They bring down temperatures in nuclear facilities also.
•        They help retain freshness of farm products, meat, milk and other dairy products, cooked food packages etc. and in large scale cold storage of food and beverage.
•        Chillers are integral parts of systems which produce comfort cooling in huge malls, cinema halls, multi-story buildings and residences.

There are different types of screw chillers, namely water cooled, air cooled or evaporative cooled. They can also be classified based on manufacturing process or the purpose they serve. They can be hazardous area chillers, cascade chillers or batching chillers.
Manufactured as water cooled or air-cooled screw chillers they are used for different purposes and different environments.

•        Water cooled ones use cooling towers and used where water supply is reliable and where space is available. These are suited for indoor installations.
•        Where water supply is scarce, air cooled screw chillers are used which are suitable for outdoor installations. Cooling is produced by mechanically circulating ambient air all around the condenser coil of the machine and the heat so removed is expelled to the atmosphere. They can work over a temperature range of 35oC to 50oC.