2 replies to this topic

[santarosa]

Hi all! I'm new here and this is going to be my first post. Is there anyone here who knows if there's a rule of thumb regarding the ratio of the cooling tower capacity with respect to the chiller's? Say, if I already know that my chiller's capacity should be 100TR, what would approximately be my cooling tower size? Thanks in advance!

[Chris Haslego]

That's really small.
100 tons of refrigeration x 12,000 Btu/h/TR = 1,200,000 Btu/h

Delta (and probably others) carry standard products that will handle that.

See this link

[Art Montemayor]

If you go to:
http://www.chillers....eParameters.htm

You can find a sizing table that shows the normal process chiller guidelines for chillers and cooling towers used primarily in the plastics industry. Blow molding, injection molding, and extrusion are the main plastics uses for needing a chiller system.

Water Chillers, of course, are used in a lot of other industries, and this estimate is for the plastics industry:

• 95 ^oF Entering Water Temperature to tower
• 78 ^oF ambient Wet Bulb
• 3 GPM / Ton = water circulation rate
• 15,000 BTU / HR / Ton heat dissipation
• Consult Manufacturer for other conditions

In most cases the process chiller efficiency is based on the evaporator tons rather than condenser tons.
If you have a different application and a specific refrigerant, I would simply make a heat and mass balance around the chiller and calculate the condenser heat duty – which is by far the largest heat load.