With improvements in air-tightness, insulation and the increasingly common presence of sealed windows, especially in multi-storey offices and accommodations, modern buildings are increasingly prone to overheating, driving the need for large scale and efficient air conditioning and cooling. At the heart of these HVAC systems will be a chilled water loop circulating through coils in the air handler units. There the chilled water, which is typically delivered into the piping system at between 5°C and 8°C, is used as a refrigerant to remove unwanted heat from the building.
Should the cooling system’s piping capacity be undersized, then the relatively low water volume causes the system to suffer from a range of problems such as compressors short cycling; poor temperature control and erratic system operation. All of which makes it harder to maintain comfortable conditions within the building. Chiller manufacturers, therefore, recommend between 11.5 to 23 litres of water per metric tonne (907 kg) for typical HVAC systems, climbing to between 23 and 40 litres per metric tonne for nominal cooling when temperature accuracy is critical.
Buffer Tanks
By increasing the water “buffer” capacity of a chiller system performance can be drastically improved. Chilled water tanks are therefore an essential component in modern-day conditioning systems, providing this increased capacity to ensure water temperature is stabilised within the parameters set by the chiller manufacturer for optimal operation.
Adveco offers a versatile range of carbon steel chilled water tanks (CWT) for commercial systems, featuring high and low-level tank connections that are suitable for moderate to high flow rates with a maximum working pressure of 6 bar. By expanding the total system volume and reducing the rate of temperature change in the return water by increasing thermal inertia through efficient insulation, temperature control is improved within a building’s cooling and conditioning system. And with better temperature control comes reduced condenser cycling and improved system start-up times, all of which helps to increase the chiller’s lifespan.
Should a system demand even greater accuracy of temperature control then higher storage volumes will be required. Adveco provides a choice of nine CWT vessels ranging in volumes from 500 to 5000 litres which offer a working temperature range of -10°C to +60°C
Adveco provide chilled water tanks for building cooling and conditioning.
