Brand new air cooled chiller £60k out of order within 10 days

[Coalhouse]

Hi,
we have just bought a brand new air cooled chiller.
within a few days and on the hottest day of summer, the discharge pressure relief valve failed.

The manufacturer stated that vibration caused the valve to fail...it has been out for the past 30 days.
My questions are:
could it be a manufacturer defect?
What should we do?
The project is outside the UK. The manufacturer is a well known supply, one of the leaders in the market.
What would you do?
Thank you,
Yves.

 

[lukaiENG]

What sort of vibration are they saying it was? internal vibration on the machine? Was the chiller installed with vibration isolation? did the rotating/reciprocating chiller components have vibration isolation? is the manufacturer recommendation to vibrationally isolate the chiller?

What was the pressure relief valve meant to be set at? Is there any data on the pressure that the chiller reached before the pressure valve went off?

I suspect this is a manufacturing issue with the valve itself - the valve blew below it's set point. An alternate is that that the ambient conditions caused the machine to operate outside of its design pressure rating and the valve. does the machine have a turbocor compressor? If so I would ask the manufacturer to provide maximum and design operating pressures and compare numbers. if they are close it might be a issue with the ability of the compressor to handle hot weather conditions.

I would normally expect to see vibration isolation of the chiller components not the chiller itself, this would make any vibration issues the chiller manufacturer's responsibility to deal with. I would refer back to equipment submittals and specifications to verify.

 

[Coalhouse]

Hi,
I have now more information.
The new chiller was installed and put in operation without the mounting the discharge pressure relief valves. On the hottest day of the year, the pressure built up and refrigerant was discharged in the condenser.
it was not related to vibration (we were mislead, I believe) but only due to the wrong installation of the chillers and its pressure relief valves. My question now is . can the operation of the chiller with blocked refrigerant circuit damage the overall long term operation of the chiller.

Thank you,
Regards,

 

[Strong]

You may want to do a close inspection of the condenser for structural damage from over pressure.

Walt