Chilled water system economy cycle thro' cooling towers

[remp]

I have an application that has a large chilled water demand even in the middle of winter. It goes down to -5 deg C outside here regularly in winter and the outdoor temp is below 5 deg C for 15% of the year...


Can I use the cooling towers to provide cooling directly to the chilled waetr system via a heat exchanger...

Does 5degC outside mean I can get the cooling tower down to 5 degC?

Has anybody try this before, any literature on it anywhere on the web on how you would pie it and control it.


Thanks

 

[walkes]

Sure, there are a number of ways of doing it. Sump heaters in the tower to prevent freezing when there is no flow. Insulated and heat traced condenser piping. Then pipe to a plate heat exchanger.

I was just reviewing an existing installation that used a Trane chiller with economizer mode for free cooling. The chiller uses convection of the refrigerant to cool the chilled water.

There should be details of a water-side economizer in the ASHRAE Handbooks.

Tower Tech towers have some descriptions of this application as well.