In the competitive Australian manufacturing, efficiency is what will mean the difference between a healthy margin and a growing loss. But nowadays, lots of facilities are paying an invisible tax that has never been recorded on a balance sheet: micro-scaling. In the delicate internal parts of an industrial chiller, a microscopic coating of mineral deposit can be a strong insulator. This thermal insulation makes your system labour even more, increasing your energy bills and slowly draining your payback.
Science of Thermal Resistance
Micro-scaling: This can happen when the minerals dissolved in the cooling water (e.g. calcium, magnesium) are precipitated onto the hot surfaces of the heat exchanger. These surfaces are made as thermal conductive as possible in a high-performance industrial water chiller. Once a scale layer as thin as 0.1mm forms, it has the potential to decrease the heat transfer efficiency by up to 10% and thus creates a direct increase in electricity consumption.
The Compressor Strain
The lower the efficiency of the heat exchanger, the longer the compressor has to run, the higher the pressure and to reach the set-point temperature. This not only raises your utility expense, but it hastens the mechanical wear and tear of your industrial chiller. What begins as a small problem in scaling, can easily result in a premature- and costly-compressor failure.
How to protect your investment in a water chiller?
To recover your ROI, you need to be proactive in regards to water quality and maintenance. The dependence on break-fix attitudes in the tough operating conditions in Australia is the financial leaky way.
Improved Water Treatment Plans
The initial line of defence is to implement the use of automated dosing systems and high quality filtration. You keep the right chemical balance and keep the minerals off the inside of the pipework of your industrial water chiller.
Frequent Descaling and Maintenance
Regular professional check-ups prevent any nascent scaling that may occur since it is detected and eliminated using chemicals before it solidifies. A clean system has the benefit of making your industrial chiller run at its optimum efficiency as commissioned, so that every kilowatt of power directly converts to cooling capacity.
Summary
Micro-scaling is a silent killer that undermines the performance of your industrial water chiller. Knowing the thermal effects of such deposits, Australian businesses will be able to shift towards strategic maintenance rather than reactive repair. To avoid the invisible tax on your operations, and to protect the life of your equipment, as well as your bottom line, making sure that your industrial chiller is scale-free is the best way to go.
