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North Slope Chillers

Industrial Water Chiller Systems

Archives for July 2019

Industrial Water Cooled Chillers

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If You Can’t Stand The Heat…

…get a water cooled chiller. Industrial water cooled chillers are versatile workhorses that provide on demand cooling for a huge variety of industries. Let’s take a closer look at the inner workings of water cooled chillers.

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Water cooled chillers use the refrigeration cycle to produce chilled fluid, typically water or a mix of water and glycol. This chilled fluid is then capable of removing heat from machinery, food, or other equipment and continuously run back through the chiller.

Air Cooled vs. Water Cooled Chillers

Air cooled and water cooled chillers have many things in common. They both belong to the same vapor compression chilling family, and they both use an electronically driven mechanical compressor to force refrigerant around the system. In fact the majority of their components are the same. The main difference between the 2 is how unwanted heat is ejected from the system.  Water cooled chillers pump water through a sealed condenser and disperse it through a cooling tower. Air cooled chillers use fans to force cool air across the condenser.

Because water is more effective at dissipating heat than air, water cooled chillers remove unwanted heat more efficiently than air cooled chillers. Water cooled chillers also are more energy efficient and last longer than air cooled chillers.

Components of Water Cooled Chillers

North Slope Chillers diagram of the components of a water cooled chiller

Compressor

The compressor provides the driving force for moving the refrigerant around the system.  There are 4 main types of compressors. 3 of them (screw, scroll, and reciprocating) use positive displacement to create pressure, and the fourth (centrifugal) creates pressure with centrifugal force.

Condenser

The condenser is a configuration of horizontal pipes through which hot refrigerant runs.

Cooling Tower

Cooling towers use evaporative cooling to remove unwanted heat. Water is pumped over the pipes carrying hot refrigerant before it is fed into the condenser.

Expansion Valve

The expansion valve expands the refrigerant from liquid form to gaseous form before it enters the evaporator.

Evaporator/Heat Exchanger

In the evaporator, chilled water is created when unwanted heat is drawn into the refrigerant before it is fed into the condenser.

Filter Drier

The filter drier protects your chiller by removing unwanted contaminants and moisture from the system. They do get clogged with repeated use and need to be replaced regularly.

Water Cooled Chilling From North Slope Chillers

Water cooled chillers from North Slope Chillers are portable and easy to use no matter the application. Our chillers are proudly made in the USA and excel at supporting a range of industries. They are perfect for cooling lasers, welders, food storage containers, lab equipment, printers, EDM, hydroponic reservoirs, plastic injection molds, fermentation tanks, server rooms, oil extraction equipment…the list goes on and on!

Contact North Slope Chillers to find the right water cooled chiller for your needs at (866) 826-2993 or [email protected].

MRI Chillers

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Cutting Edge Cooling

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines are among the most valuable pieces of equipment in a hospital’s possession; not just in terms of cost, but also in terms of versatility. Providing patients with a complete image of their internal systems is an important step in diagnosing and treating a wide number of health problems. As a complicated piece of machinery, an MRI machine has incredibly specific cooling needs to keep it operational.

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MRI Room Cooling Needs

If you have ever walked into an MRI room, either for yourself or to assist another patient, you know it is not the most comfortable place to be. Cooling the ambient air in an MRI room not only protects the equipment from heat stress, but also provides patients with added comfort during a lengthy and sometimes stressful medical procedure.

The magnets used in an MRI machine are incredibly powerful and can put off a lot of heat. Excessive heat within the machinery itself can lead to costly helium leaks as well as inaccurate image results for the patient.

What Does an MRI Chiller Need?

Industrial chillers typically consist of a compressor, evaporator, expansion valve, and a condenser. MRI chillers require a few additional components to effectively cool an MRI machine.

Advanced Temperature Controller

MRI chillers are highly specialized for a number of reasons. MRI machines do not operate at a constant, even power load. Their power usage and heat output ramp up quickly, so an effective MRI chiller needs to be able to dissipate that heat just as quickly. 

The most effective MRI chillers are accompanied by a top of the line microprocessor that can react quickly to the shock of rapid load surges and keep temperatures under control.

Scroll Compressors

Industrial chillers have different compressor types available to them: centrifugal, screw, reciprocating, and scroll.  MRI chillers most commonly include a scroll compressor because they operate at lower sound and vibration levels. On their own, MRI machines operate so loudly that patients are provided with ear protection. Operating a quieter MRI chiller reduces the sonic stress for hospital staff and patients.

Emergency By-pass Valve

MRI Chiller with city by-pass valve

Hospitals cannot afford to go dark if any power interruption occurs. Most hospital systems have emergency generators that can keep life-saving machinery up and running. However, MRI chillers require both electricity and water supply. MRI chillers needs to have a bypass valve that allows them to switch over to city water flow in the event of an emergency. This emergency by-pass valve ensures that MRI equipment is provided with cooling under any circumstances.

Medical Cooling From North Slope Chillers

In the bio-medical industry, process cooling should never be an afterthought. Hospitals need reliable chilling to protect patients, lab samples, and critical equipment. North Slope Chillers portable industrial chillers provide essential cooling for a wide variety of bio-medical needs.  Contact us about your bio-medical chilling needs: (866) 826-2993 [email protected]

Whirlpooling

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What Is Whirlpooling?

Whirlpooling. Dangerous when floating a river, but critical when brewing beer. To put it simply, whirlpooling separates the good stuff in your brew from the waste that can be thrown away. 

Because whirlpooling is such an important part of the brewing process, simply stirring just isn’t going to cut it. Let’s dive into the brew, shall we?

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whirlpooling
Image from Homebrewersassociation.org

Wort And Trub

Before you can ferment your brew, you have to separate the brewed wort from the trub. 

For those who don’t speak beer, here’s a quick glossary: 

Wort:

Wort is “the sweet, amber liquid extracted from malted barley that the yeast will later ferment into beer.” According to Howtobrew.com, whirlpooling helps prepare the wort for fermentation by “gathering most of the break and hops into the center of the pot to better enable the siphon to draw off clear wort from the side.”

Trub:

Beerandbrewing.com identifies trub as “a collective term covering sediments formed in the brewing process during wort boiling—called hot break—and upon cooling the wort before primary fermentation boiling—called cold break—as well as during cold storage of fermented beer, which is called cold trub.” In any form, trub is usually discarded by brewers as a waste-product. 

Whirlpooling is the process of steeping hops in a way that preserves oils essential for wort flavor while separating out the trub. 

Let It Whirl

The swirling motion of the brew prevents most of the hop oils from boiling away. You can whirlpool your brew by using a spoon to stir or anything that will get the water moving. 

The main benefits of whirlpooling are preserving flavoring oils from boiling off and collecting trub to be disposed of. Experts in whirlpooling will do so in a way that shapes the trub into a cone at the bottom of the boiling pot: 

Whirlpooling

Once you’ve moved the wort brew to the fermentation chamber, you can throw away the trub. Some homebrewers use trub as a fertilizer for their lawns and gardens. Others use it as a drain filter due to the trub’s straining properties. 

Temperature Control

Throughout the brewing process, ensuring your brew doesn’t get too hot or cold is critical. North Slope Chillers offers fermentation chillers and Keg Coolers to help keep your brew at the desired temperature during each stage. For more information about how North Slope Chillers can help you brew the finest craft beer you’ve ever made, call (866) 826-2993 or email [email protected]. 

Air Cooled Chillers

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The Chillers That Do It All

Air cooled chillers are versatile workhorses that provide cooling power to both small and large operations. Their compact design makes them portable, easy to install, and inexpensive to maintain. Let’s closely examine the inner and outer workings of air cooled chillers.

download the chiller selection guide
Air Cooled Chiller from North Slope Chillers

Air cooled chillers use the refrigeration cycle to produce chilled fluid, typically water or a mix of water and glycol. This chilled fluid is then capable of removing heat from machinery, food, or other equipment and continuously run back through the chiller.

Air Cooled vs. Water Cooled Chillers

Air cooled and water cooled chillers have many things in common. They both belong to the same vapor compression chilling family, and they both use an electronically driven mechanical compressor to force refrigerant around the system. In fact the majority of their components are the same. The main difference between the 2 is how unwanted heat is ejected from the system.  Water cooled chillers pump water through a sealed condenser and disperse it through a cooling tower. Air cooled chillers use fans to force cool air across the condenser.

A water cooled chiller’s cooling tower and pump take up more space than the fans in an air cooled chiller. Because of this main component difference, air cooled chillers have a more compact footprint. Cooling towers are also more expensive to maintain, making air cooled chillers the clear lower maintenance option. In general, air cooled chillers have significantly lower upfront costs as well.

Components of Air Cooled Chillers

North Slope Chillers diagram of the components of an air cooled chiller

Compressor

The compressor provides the driving force for moving the refrigerant around the system.  There are four main types of compressors. Three of them (screw, scroll, and reciprocating) use positive displacement to create pressure, and the fourth (centrifugal) creates pressure with centrifugal force.

Condenser

The condenser is a configuration of horizontal pipes through which hot refrigerant runs. Air is moved across the condenser to dissipate unwanted heat.

Condenser Fans

These fans represent the main difference between air cooled and water cooled chillers. As they move air across the condenser, unwanted heat is removed from the system so the cycle can start all over again.

Expansion Valve

The expansion valve expands the refrigerant from liquid form to gaseous form before it enters the evaporator.

Evaporator/Heat Exchanger

In the evaporator, chilled water is created when unwanted heat is drawn into the refrigerant before it is fed into the condenser.

Filter Drier

The filter drier protects your chiller by removing unwanted contaminants and moisture from the system. They do get clogged with repeated use and need to be replaced regularly.

Air Cooled Chilling From North Slope Chillers

Air cooled chillers house all of these components in a single space saving cabinet that is easily incorporated into any operation. Air cooled chillers from North Slope Chillers are portable and easy to use no matter the application. Our chillers excel at cooling lasers, welders, food storage containers, lab equipment, printers, EDM, hydroponic reservoirs, plastic injection molds, fermentation tanks, server rooms, oil extraction equipment…the list goes on and on! Contact North Slope Chillers to find the right air cooled chiller for your needs at (866) 826-2993 or [email protected].

Centrifugal Chillers

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What Goes Around Comes Around

Centrifugal chillers are one of the hardest working machines behind the comfort that we enjoy everyday. When we visit movie theaters, grocery stores, or office buildings and feel the cool relief of air conditioning as we enter, we have centrifugal chillers to thank.

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Centrifugal chillers are typically the most economical chiller to use for cooling sizable buildings. They can efficiently produce a high flow rate and are ideal for larger applications. Centrifugal chillers usually have fewer moving parts than other varieties, and with less mechanical friction are more cost effective to maintain. Some cooling applications require greater portability and lower cooling temperatures than centrifugal compressors are built to produce. Their range of usefulness is limited by their large footprint and emphasis on volume instead of cooling power.

Types of Compressors

Positive Displacement Compressors

There are 4 main types of compressors found in vapor compression chillers: scroll, screw, reciprocating, and centrifugal.  Scroll, screw, and reciprocating compressors work through the process of positive displacement. Positive displacement compressors capture gases into a chamber, then reduce the volume of the chamber to cause compression.

Centrifugal (Kinetic) Compressors

These compressors use centrifugal force to turn kinetic energy into pressure. As gases enters the compressor, they are spun radially outward causing them to compress. Centrifugal force then throws the gases back out at a high velocity.

Centrifugal Force

Centrifugal force is an inertial force that acts on all objects rotating around an axis. It is the same compressing force you feel in many carnival rides or when you make a u-turn in your car, and is a very energy efficient method of compression.

A common centrifugal force experiment is to take a bucket of water and, with a straight arm, quickly rotate at the shoulder and swing the bucket upward and around a vertical loop. Centrifugal force compresses the water enough to counteract gravity so that even when the bucket it upside-down, the water stays in the bucket.

North Slope Chillers diagram explaining centrifugal force within a centrifugal compressor

Centrifugal compressors take this force one step further with expelling the gases out at a specific point in the radial spin. This is best explained by imagining a ball at the end of a rope. If you were to swing the rope vertically around an axis (your hand) at a high velocity, centrifugal force will be pulling the ball outward. When that rope is released at the correct angle, the ball will exit the loop at a high speed and be hurled upward.

Parts of a Centrifugal Compressor

Basic centrifugal compressors are made from 4 main components: an inlet, impeller, diffuser, and collector.

North Slope Chillers diagram on the components of a centrifugal compressor

Inlet

An inlet is a pipe in which the gases enter the compressor. Some inlets are open and simple, others contain valves or channels to direct flow in the direction needed inside the compressor.

Impeller

Impellers are the key component in generating centrifugal force. Rotors with carefully angled vanes or blades spin and raise the energy of the gases inside the compressor.

Diffuser

These high velocity fluids or gases are thrown outward and hit the diffuser which converts the kinetic energy into pressure by reducing the velocity.  Diffusers accomplish this in a variety of ways, such as channels or wedged vanes for the high velocity substance to compress against.

Collector

The collector is an empty chamber which gathers the flow coming out of the diffuser. The shape of a collector varies greatly but typically resembles a nautilus shell so it can collect around the entire radius of the impeller and diffuser. Collectors can also sometimes contain valves or other components.

Chilling Solutions

Industrial chillers and their components should be carefully selected so they are ideally situated for the application at hand. Understanding the function and benefits for different compressors can help you find a tailor made chilling solution for your needs.

Chilling Solutions From North Slope Chillers

North Slope Chillers offers easy to install, portable chillers that won’t disrupt your current setup. Contact us to find the chilling solution for your needs:

(866) 826-2993 [email protected]