Condenser load for water cooled chillers

[mpeck1982]

Through my experience, the condenser section of a chiller is always larger and thus has more gpm and load. Is it a general rule of thumb that the condenser load in tons is always 25% greater than the evaporator load in tons? Is their a standard to this? At my plant which has 500-Ton, 1000-Ton, and 2000-Ton chillers the design condenser water gpm is 25% greater than the chilled water gpm. Just curious if this is a standard for all water cooled chillers...

 

[DRWeig]

That figure is based on chiller efficiency and the delta-T of both condenser and evaporator. If your chillers are reasonably efficient (say, 0.65 kW/T), and the delta-T of both evaporator and condenser are the same, then 25± percent is an okay number. Probably pretty common.

I'm looking at one right here, though, with 0.56 kW/Ton, 10°F delta T condenser and 15°F delta T on the evaporator. Condenser water flow is 3250 GPM and evaporator flow is 2000 GPM, so condenser is 63 percent greater than evaporator.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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[MintJulep]

The condenser must reject the heat load from the evaporators + compressor work.

The "rule of thumb" is that the amount of compressor work is readily available in the chiller manufacturer's technical data.

 

[willard3]

First law of thermo, water is cooled in the chiller.....evaporator
Second law of thermo, heat rejected cooling the water will be larger than the cooling effect, ie, entropy increases......condenser