AIR CONDITIONING
Fundamentals and energy saving
By Mike Creamer, president of the Institute of Refrigeration.
T
he world climate is changing dramatically and our industry, although serving the crucial needs of cooling in hospitals, data
centres, manufacturing, refrigeration and so on, consumes over 17% of world electrical power, and the associated CO2
release and global
warming. Too much of this electrical power is being wasted through plant and system inefficiency. This has to change – and fast. But how? Our field technicians, installers, commissioning and service engineers have substantial influence on just how well, or not, our cooling systems run. These are the great people who can achieve this – or not. If we are to succeed in this quest, it is critically important that every technician and engineer caring for our water chillers, splits, VRF systems and indeed any and every type of equipment, has the essential underpinning fundamental knowledge, skills, enthusiasm and the will to do so.
Without these four attributes, there is little hope of us tuning and maintaining our RACHP systems at the highest efficiency levels and the lowest energy consumption.
What should this 'underpinning knowledge' include? A clear and proven understanding of the following examples and what causes efficient, or inefficient operation:
24 February 2022 •
www.acr-news.com
QWorking principles of the equipment and systems on which he/she is working
Q Determining actual performance against rated performance and correcting, as required
Q Refrigeration cycles Q Cooling and heating capacity in relation to water flow rates
Q Power input and COP Q Refrigerant properties Q Thermal performance and efficiency of compressors
Q Function of evaporators, sensible and latent cooling
Q Function of condensers and heat of rejection Q System controls and protection Q System charge and sub-cooling Q Superheat setting of EEVs/TEVs.
Fundamental knowledge for technicians and engineers can be gained from various sources: Q Quality training and certification courses from established training providers
Q Good practice guides from the ior Q The ior rachp engtech section Q Rachp textbooks.
Perhaps it’s time that we rearranged the conversion and training of our best field personnel to become performance or energy or efficiency technicians and engineers.
Cutting energy waste
Over many years analysing the performance of air conditioning and refrigeration systems, I have personally managed energy reductions of up to 30%, simply by making basic adjustments, underpinned by my basic knowledge of important fundamentals.
Indeed, I would say that much of my key technical strengths are almost entirely due to this elementary knowledge, which can easily be passed on to enthusiastic and conscientious technicians and engineers. This over-arching energy-saving objective is so important that the four key priorities of our Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) include 'setting the environmental agenda for our sector to achieve net zero. As IOR president, I praise and commend
the excellent work already executed by the IOR working group under Professor Graeme Maidment, all of which is freely available to our IOR Members – and at low cost to non-members.
Good practice guides (GPG’s) Many years ago, I wrote the Masterclass – Air Conditioning Technology Series, a monthly release with ACR News, which ran for nine years, was then updated and ran again for another six years. The IOR is now releasing Good Practice
Guides based on updated extracts from the Masterclass Series to help our industry technicians
Download the ACR News app today
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