Taking a modular approach for replacement chillers
Many large commercial office buildings from the 80’s and 90’s were designed using chilled water systems delivering conditioned air into the space via fan coils and airhandling units.
Due to their size and type, to provide the chilled water to these systems many of these building had multiple centrifugal or screw chillers installed in basements or high-level often roof mounted plant rooms.
The well know landmark in Canary Wharf known now as Citi Bank is a perfect example of this. When the building was designed and built, it was constructed with plant rooms housing six No 3 Mw centrifugal chillers. Equipment was often oversized by 20-25%
The problem is they are nearing the end of life, and the issue is replacing water chillers in a commercial office building where chillers are located on a high-level plant room of this huge building. This is a not uncommon picture that faces the occupiers, the FM Contractor, the landlord and of course the M&E consultants.
The issue isn’t getting the old equipment out, it’s what type of equipment do you replace them with and how do you get the new equipment up there? Craneage costs can be substantial, with road closures commonplace and the disruption to occupiers and tenants has to be factored in.
Having recently won an award for Innovation at the recent RAC awards with our WWM modular chiller, we have made the whole process much simpler, quicker and substantially cheaper with no need for a crane and virtually zero inconvenience to the occupiers.
At Aermec we have continued to develop or modular chillers meaning that with the WWM chiller we can replace any duty of chiller up to 3.45Mw of cooling by providing individual 96Kw Modules c/w high-efficiency scroll compressors that can fit through any doorway up to 800mm wide and each module will fit into a standard goods lift. Each module be connected together horizontally or vertically. You can find out more here
With the need for energy savings across all commercial buildings, this means that the modules are only called in to match the load and therefore don’t need large single compressor centrifugal or screw chillers. The applications and uses for modular chillers are endless especially where large chillers located in either basements or high-level plants rooms that are difficult to access.
Do you need to replace the Chillers in your Building? Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have a challenging application.
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