by
Keith Loria, Reporter | September 17, 2010
Challenges
The difficulty in coordinating between all involved parties to have a successful chiller install can also be an ordeal, enough so that many chiller manufacturers hire their own project managers.
A big challenge the chiller industry faces is that different states can have different requirements.
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“For example, we include a city water bypass panel with our chillers and we're finding in some metropolitan areas that they will be fined for using this back-up system, so hospitals and imaging centers are not able to have cooling back-up, which is why we provide dual-circuit chillers for our medical customers,” says Johnson. “With the dual circuit, a component failure on one circuit won't necessarily halt imaging.”
Historically, energy efficiency measures such as ASHRAE .1 and LEED have not been applied to MR chillers because the focus has been on reliability and meeting the MR systems requirements.
Johnson says that they design and build their chillers to be in line with these requirements anyway, adding proper sizing of the refrigeration system components, using newer “green” refrigerants and reducing the overall refrigerant charge in the system.
“We are also looking into [Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development] certification for our chillers due to the increasing seismic regulations in California and elsewhere,” Johnson says.
An example of
one of Filtrane's
custom-built chillers.
The chiller industry is expected to face new seismic requirements next year, with tighter tolerances and higher demands for operability after being subjected to the effects of an earthquake.
The right fit
There’s a lot that customers need to understand about medical chillers. They need to know what the capacity requirement is for cooling, what temperature they need to maintain for their water, what flow rate they need for the water and even how their facility’s location can make a big difference.
“You may be looking at 20 feet through a single wall or other times it can be 500 feet, and you need to put the appropriate-sized pumps in to flow the fluid vertically to ensure they are getting pressure at the point they need the cooling delivered,” Bond says.
