Avery 112
Avery 112
Avery 112
Chillers
or the past 30 or more years most central chilled water plants have
used primary-secondary pumping arrangements as shown in
Figure 1. The primary system includes all equipment to the plant side
of Points A and B and the secondary system includes all equipment to the
load side of these points. The majority of these systems have the chillers
staged from flow. As the flow in the secondary starts to exceed the flow in
the primary, an additional primary pump and chiller is staged on. As the flow
(Operating T ) (Design Capacity )
in the secondary decreases, so that one less chiller can handle the reduced
Design T
flow, a pump and chiller is staged off. This method of control assumes that
Very often facilities with operating conthe load is proportional to flow and that the T between the chilled water ditions such as these will add an additional
chiller and pump even though the existing
supply and return is constant and at the design condition.
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Chillers
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return water and by measuring the load (flow T). When the
load decreases below the capacity of an on-line chiller, that
chiller and pump is staged off. The sensors in the supply and
return lines must be matched sensors with an accuracy of
0.10F (0.5C). These changes generally have been shown to
reduce the kW/ton by 10 to 20%.
Most chillers will operate satisfactorily with evaporator tube
water velocities between 3 and 12 fps (0.9 and 3.6 m/s). Under
certain conditions (e.g., startup), the flow in the secondary will
exceed the primary design flow and the primary and secondary
pumps will then be in series. There will be a slight increase in
the flow through the chillers under these conditions but since
the flow varies as the square of the head, the actual increase
will rarely exceed 10% above design. An increase in flow even
this great would require an increase in pump head of over 20%
a condition unlikely to occur with the usual centrifugal pumps
that are chosen with flat pump curves.
Single Pump Primary/Secondary System
For new construction, the central plant can be designed us16
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Decentralized Systems
Outlying buildings on campuses and institutional complexes
may have chilled water sources that can be connected to the
chilled water system through the supply and return manifold
as shown in Figure 7. Building A houses the chilled water or
ice storage facility. Building B has an existing chiller and load.
Buildings C and E have a load and source respectively. Building D houses the central chiller plant. All sources pump out of
the return manifold through the cooling source and into the
supply manifold. All loads are pumped out of the supply manifold through the load and into the return manifold. Two position valves V-1 are used to isolate inactive loads and sources.
Multiplexing all of the chilled water sources and loads in this
manner has many advantages. Any source or combination of
sources can serve any load or combination of loads any place
on the manifold. Loads and sources can be matched to provide
the most efficient operation. Manifold piping is smaller and
less expensive than conventional loop piping. Chiller redundancy is maximized. A detailed method of controlling loads and
sources is found in (Avery 1987).
Tertiary Pumping Systems
Tertiary loads on central systems are generally piped in the
customary fashion as shown in Figure 8. Temperature sensor
T-1 controls valve V-1 to maintain the design supply chilled
water temperature. Differential pressure sensor DP-1 conMay 2001
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trols the speed of the building pump through the variable frequency drive VFD. This method of piping and control does
not take advantage of the differential pressure that is available
between the supply and return mains. The pressure is wasted
across valve V-1. A preferred method of piping the tertiary
system is shown in Figure 9. The differential pressure sensor
DP-1 controls valve V-1 in sequence with the speed of the
pump through the variable frequency drive VFD. As the load
in the building increases, valve V-1 modulates open. On a
continued drop in differential pressure, pump P-1 will start
and ramp up to the speed required to maintain the design differential pressure at DP-1. The cycle reverses on a rise in differential pressure. Using the pressure between the supply and
return mains reduces the building pumping energy.
Summary
The use of the typical primary/secondary paradigm shown in
Figure 1 may be costing building owners millions of dollars in
additional operating costs because of the inefficient nature of
these systems. There are better ways of designing chilled water
systems. Its time to get our heads out of the 1950s and start
using what weve learned since then.
Bibliography
Avery, G. 1987. Microprocessor control for large chilled water
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