Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Check Valve
A Check Valve
T
he problem with the pri- this syndrome to one degree or an- provement that can be made to
mary-secondary design of other. Its especially problematic primary-secondary pumping of a
chilled water systems, as in primary-secondary systems chilled water plant that permits a
shown in Fig. 1, is that it cannot where excess secondary CHR system to deal with Low T Cen-
deal effectively with Low T Cen- flows through the crossover-de- tral Plant Syndromeinstall a
tral Plant Syndrome. This is the coupler pipe, diluting the temper- check valve in the plant bypass
point made in my article The ature of chilled water supply line, as shown in Fig. 2. Gil Avery
Demise of the Primary-Secondary (CHS) going out to the system. If a included this feature in his article
Pumping Paradigm for Chilled chilled water plant has no provi- Designing and Commissioning
Water Plant Design (HPAC, No- sion to increase primary flow Variable Hydronic Systems
vember 1996). Low T Central through its chillers when chilled (ASHRAE Journal, July 1993).
Plant Syndrome is the condition water T is low, then operators of- Heres what the check valve does
whereby an anemically low ten have only one option to meet for you:
chilled water return (CHR) tem- the cooling load and prevent recir- The chillers are protected
perature causes an excessive culating flow through the against low flow. A constant
amount of chilled water to circu- crossoverenergize more chillers minimum flow is maintained
late to meet system cooling loads, and their attendant pumps. The through each chiller by constant
and chillers receiving the low tem- energy penalty for this Hobsons flow primary pumps even though
perature CHR cannot be loaded to choice, in addition to the excessive secondary flow varies. This is the
their design capacity. secondary pumping energy, is the main advantage cited for pri-
The causes of Low T Syn- energy needed to run an extra set mary-secondary chilled water sys-
drome are not mysterious, but of chiller peripheralsi.e., an ex- tems. Thus, theres no possibility
Variable Variable
speed drive speed drive
Constant Constant
Chiller
Chiller
Chiller
Chiller
flow flow
pumps Crossover- Check
decoupler pumps
valve
1 The archetypal primary-secondary CHW plant 2 The improved primary-secondary CHW plant
design. design incorporates a check valve.
continued from page 129 not reduce overall system flow ap- ciency reduction of 1 to 3 percent.
sure of available chiller capacity preciably. Nonetheless, this strat- If we assume a 3 percent reduc-
but because its generally avail- egy is a good one to try if for no tion for an existing chiller, the
able on the chiller starter panel. other reason than to troubleshoot penalty for a reduction in CHW
Correlating this measure to the source of your low T problem. temperature from 45 to 42 F
chiller loading is complicated by If lowering the CHS temperature would be 0.041 KW per ton. If all
the influence of power factor, part results in one-half the expected flow actually reduced to approxi-
load chiller efficiency, and capac- flow reduction, then you know mately two-thirds due to the low-
ity increase due to condenser wa- that roughly one-half of your con- ering of CHS temperature from 45
ter reset, so some judgment or, in trol valves are under control. If to 42 F, I calculate there could be
the absence of judgment, cyber- theres no change in flow, every- a net saving for pump energy over
processing is necessary to gauge thing is running wild, and nothing chiller penalty if pumping head is
accurately when n 1 chillers can is under control. well in excess of 100 ft. However, I
handle the load being carried by n The disadvantage of lowering would speculate that this degree
chillers. CHS temperature is the energy of improvement in CHW flow is
penalty for a chiller operating at unlikely in most systems with
Lowering CHS temperature reduced chilled water tempera- Central Plant Syndrome.
When low T is a problem, ture. The penalty is at least 0.012
theres another strategy operators KW per ton per deg F depression of Conclusion
can pursue to increase chilled wa- evaporating temperature in the To my way of thinking, the
ter T in the systemreduce CHS ideal casei.e., assuming no checked primary-secondary de-
temperatures at all but full load degradation in compressor effi- sign is a cheap and simple im-
chiller capacity. This can easily be ciency. But compressor efficiency provement to primary-secondary
accomplished by lowering the CHS will generally fall off as the chiller design of chilled water plants that
set point temperature on each is asked to operate at an off-de- allows a plant to deal positively
chillers control panel. Then at part sign condition. I cant predict how with Low T Central Plant Syn-
load, the chillers will produce much compressor efficiency will drome while preserving the protec-
colder chilled water but as chiller degrade for an existing machine, tive features of primary-secondary
load increases will automatically but I have done the calculation for design. Lowering CHS tempera-
reset CHS up to design tempera- two new chiller selections opti- ture to improve T may be worth a
ture. With a further increase in mized for 42 and 45 F CHS tem- try if your plants problem is par-
load, leaving CHS temperature peratures. The 42 F chiller will ticularly severe, but I dont believe
will exceed the desired design typically have a compressor effi- it will generally pay out.
value, thereby signaling that the
chiller is fully loaded and that an
additional chiller is needed.
The advantage of lowering the
CHS temperature supplied to
cooling coils is that it reduces
System Analysis vs. Quick Fixes for
their CHW flow requirement and
raises the CHW T across the coil.
Existing Chilled Water Systems
For example, lowering CHS tem-
perature from 45 to 42 F reduces By JAMES B. (BURT) RISHEL, PE This discussion deals with the
the coil flow requirement for the Chairman, suitability of using a check valve
same load to roughly two-thirds Systecon, Inc., in chiller bypasses as a quick fix
and increases T by roughly 150 Cincinnati, Ohio for control of chilled water in ex-
percent. If coils are under control, isting chilled water systems. The
T
lowering CHS temperature will here are many existing check valve does stop reverse flow
increase chilled water T. But if chilled water systems, de- in the chiller bypass, which is a
the root cause of low T is that signed in the era of mechan- problem in many traditional pri-
coils are running wild due to wide ical control, that utilize a number mary-secondary systems. How-
open throttling valves or open by- of safeguards to protect chillers, ever, there is much more than
passes, as I believe is most often cooling towers, and chilled water dealing with reverse flow that
the case (see my article Trouble- pumps. The advent of digital elec- must be done to improve the per-
shooting CHW Problems at the tronics has enabled us to rethink formance of many existing chilled
NASA Johnson Space Center, these safeguards and determine if water systems.
HPAC, February 1995), then they are needed now that we have Today, we live in a world of de-
colder chilled water supply will more precise and reliable control. sign changes that have resulted in
Chiller
Chiller
Chiller
Chiller
Chiller
Chiller
continued from page 132 valves on any of the cooling coils. coils can be applied that will re-
the standard primary-secondary Replace them with two-way duce the constant flow through
systems with both chiller pumps valves of a quality that will with- them.
and system pumps. Each type of stand all water pressures imposed Verify that all coils have in-
system requires a different proce- upon them. terlocking controls that insure
dure for achieving an economical If wild coils (without control that the control valve is closed
and efficient chilled water system. valves) exist in the system, deter- whenever the fan supplying air to
Eliminate all three-way mine if other procedures for these the coil is stopped.
Check thermostat settings
that may be lower than the design
value, causing the control valve to
open and pass an excessive vol-
ume of water, at low tempera-
tures, to the return system.
Install Petes plugs on the
return piping from all cooling coils
so that all coils can be checked for
poor operationthat is, with low
return water temperature.
Determine if the coils are
dirty in either/both air side or wa-
ter side. Dirty coils or damaged
coil fins can be the cause for low
return water temperatures.
There are problems that can
cause higher energy costs. One is
when the design pump head is ex-
cessive. Determining the actual
required pump head for a chilled
water system is difficult for the
design engineer. Once the system
is in operation, it is easier to de-
termine the true system head.
Another may be found in older
systems. These often utilize central
pumps to pump the entire system.
Various procedures are used to tie
together several pumping systems.
The advent of the variable speed
pump has enabled designers to use
variable speed booster pumps (Fig.
3) to improve the overall operating
efficiency of the system. There are
many such booster pump systems
in operation, proving that this is an
efficient procedure for some appli-
cations.
This article has only high-
lighted the problems that can oc-
cur in existing chilled water sys-
tems. Every system needs a total
evaluation, not a quick fix. There
is no universal answer for all in-
stallations. HPAC