Heat recovery chillers: Helping to cut costs

There are four key benefits to considering heat recovery systems: To improve a chiller’s total energy efficiency ratio, to utilise chiller waste heat, to reduce heating costs, and to reduce carbon emissions.

Heat recovery is an integral element of heat recovery chillers; it offers an energy efficient solution that can be utilised to improve green credentials.

Heat recovery chillers with current refrigerant legislation and are often explored by sites looking to comply with the R22 phase out while also achieving further enhanced savings with heat recovery functionality leaving a much reduced carbon footprint.

The Carbon Trust identifies that: 'the application of Heat Recovery techniques can significantly reduce energy consumption, running costs, and carbon emissions.”

A standard cooling system provides a building or process with cooled water, and transfers waste heat energy into the atmosphere. With heat recovery chiller technology, a desuperheater within the chiller circuit, transfers a percentage of the heat load (up to 100%) and diverts it to a secondary circuit used for heating or hot water.

In order to use heat recovery effectively, waste heat is best used to improve an existing heating process such as pre-heating for a process boiler or HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) requirement as less heat would be wasted and maximum savings could be achieved.

Not only does heat recovery technology utilise waste heat to minimise heating costs and carbon emissions, it is also a great alternative for replacing harmful HCFC refrigerants such as R22. With less than a year to go until R22 is no longer serviceable, it is important that companies begin to review the systems they have in place now before it is too late.

Case history

 Based in Leicestershire, a major purveyor of sandwiches to some of the UK’s leading retailers, cafes, petrol forecourts and franchise partnerships operates a wide variety of processes in a bid to keep on top of its ever-expanding and diversifying product lines. ICS Cool Energy recently supplied a full turnkey package to enhance the business’ manufacturing ability in a sustainable and energy efficient way using heat recovery technology. 

The company supplied AT/K/PH 4161 chiller units to reduce costs for the nationwide food manufacturer. Richard Metcalfe, sales director at ICS Cool Energy explains how its engineers supplied a full turnkey system for the site: "We ensured that we covered each aspect of the solution from the initial surveying and energy analysis of the site, to installing and commissioning of equipment.

"The units with heat recovery functionality are capable of extracting 361.8kW, providing the food manufacturer with a modern range of air cooled temperature control, subsequently reducing overheads and benefitting their environmental credentials in a sustainable way by negating previous reliance on existing units containing R22 refrigerant gas.”

From January 1st 2015, the R22 refrigerant will no longer be replaceable and ICS Cool Energy is advising companies to review their chiller systems now, incorporating newer, more technologically sustainable alternatives before it is too costly and too late.

Metcalfe continues, "The new system provides cooling to the site’s processes whilst simultaneously using any waste heat that would usually be expelled to the atmosphere, recycling it to pre-heat the mains water feed at the site’s steam generation plant. During standard operation, savings of up to £56,000 could be achieved; however with heat recovery fully engaged it has the potential be so much more.”