Performance improvement of water-cooled screw chiller under part load operation conditions by the paralleling throttle mechanism

Abstract

Currently, water-cooled screw chiller is widely applied in commercial and industrial buildings, and the energy consumption of water chiller even could cover 70% of air-conditioning energy consumption in the most adverse operating conditions. Moreover, a number of chillers are running at a low rate under part-load state. In order to reduce the energy consumption of water-cooled screw chillers under part-load state, the paper presents the paralleling throttle mechanism. Through experimental study, under part-load state, it can be found that the by-pass tube diameter ?16 has the most positive effect on the performance of water-cooled screw chiller in four by-pass tube diameters. The oblique access mode is better than the vertical access mode, while the spiral access mode has little influence on the chiller performance. Because of paralleling throttle using, the exergetic loss of the evaporator and chiller is able to be reduced by 3.4%-15.5% and 0-6.7%, respectively. Meanwhile, the coefficient of performance of chiller can be enhanced by 0.2%-1.6%, and discharge temperature can be reduced by 0.4-2.7?C. In addition, the economic and environmental benefits of the advanced water-cooled screw chiller are more evident than the conventional water-cooled screw chiller's.