BTU meter in the chilled water system

[moideen]

A project with 10, 5OO ton CAPACITY centrifugal chiller (3500 ton*3) is in the commissioning stage. Now chiller works but civil job is in progress. Time will take for the complete operation. In the view from the client side, there is no individual BTU meters for chiller, but they planning to install common header. But I feel it is better for individual meter for each chiller. Then can analyses the monthly/annual energy consumption, chiller comparison with another, COP checking of each chiller,etc. Common header btu meter will tell only the total consumption and it is difficult to evaluate the chiller performance. What is your thoughts……thanks

 

[willard3]

Can you monitor run time for each chiller from chiller control package?

 

[LittleInch]

What sort of instrumentation is available on each chiller?

Temperature in and out I would assume.

Any sort of flow meter will be able to give you BTU or energy for each one.

They are pretty decent sized units so I would be surprised if they don't have some process measurements that you can use.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[moideen]

willard3: run time can monitor, i think this is common with all type chillers.

 

[moideen]

LittleInch ower supply 11 kv, the chiller display doesn't give KWH, but shows live motor wattage. but, a good control mechanism should show the kwh and actual consumption. btu meter required to measure the actual flow. i believe this is mandatory for this type of higher capacity chillers.

 

[quark]

If you can maintain required straight lengths upstream and downstream of each chiller, for the flowmeter, the only concern is commercial. If straight lengths are not available then the measurement can't be accurate. Usually, chillers this size (even as small as 200TR) gives you percentage loading and power consumption instantaneously and trending of them. Even if you install BTU Meters, you still need to capture data from chillers for comparison. They are good to have but not must.

 

[moideen]

quark: Why not must? Because actual capacity versus compressor kw need to know to calculate the efficiency of chiller. It is need to know how much thermal energy consumed monthly and yearly. What is the COP chiller maintain? Design IPLV and APLV is a benchmark and is required to know to plan and improve the maintenance. It is also annexed when calculate the total plant efficiency. Better calculation and understanding can bring the chiller to run with a best efficiency mode.

 

[GT-EGR]

If you go back to your original post, I think your question was whether or not BTU meter per chiller was a must. Seems like the consensus including my own is that it isnt mandatory. Unless part of your design intent and what you were hired to do included specifically measuring chiller efficiency/output independently.

Like quark said, and the main reason this isn’t typical per chiller is because it is difficult to get the straight runs required for accurate measurement, and if your measurement isn’t accurate it defeats the purpose.

You should first determine all the direct measurements already built into your chiller before going down this road. You may get enough info to get close enough to what you are looking for, especially once you normalize it against your total system BTU meter.

It’s not a must, because having a direct flow measurement for every individual chiller running is not a requirement to operate a chiller plant.