A novel energy-saving method for air-cooled chiller plant by parallel connection

A novel method was put forward for improving the energy efficiency of air-cooled water chiller plant operating on part load conditions. The conventional multiple-chiller plant was proposed to be integrated into one refrigeration cycle, by connecting those separate compressors, condensers and evaporators in parallel, respectively. The integrated multiple-chiller plant uses the electronic expansion valve to control refrigerant flow, achieving variable condensing temperature control. A prototype composed of four reciprocating compressors (including one variable-speed compressor), with total nominal cooling capacity of 120 kW was simulated and experimented. Both the simulative and experimental results indicated that applying this novel energy-saving method, the air-cooled chiller plant could get a significant performance improvement on various part load ratio (PLR) conditions, due to the apparent decrease of condensing temperature and some increase of evaporating temperature. Under the same outdoor temperature of 35 °C, when the PLR decreased from 100% to 50%, the COP increased by about 16.2% in simulation and 9.5% in experiment. Also, the practical refrigeration output ratio of the system was 55% on the condition of 50% PLR.