As an owner or operator of refrigeration equipment you will already appreciate that they are an energy intensive piece of business hardware.
Your refrigeration system can be considered as a heat pump moving energy from a closed insulated box to an external environment always looking to re-establish equilibrium.
You can recycle or harvest some of the waste heat from your freezer or refrigeration service and utilise this to heat fluids or air. This is often referred to as waste heat recovery. This is achieved by installing an auxillary heat exchanger between the refrigeration compressor and the standard condenser rejecting heat to the environment.
The most common applications include pre-heaters of hot water services. If a hot water service needed to produce for example 85°c water, then pre-heating the make-up water using "waste" heat might accomodate up to 50% of the energy required.
Systems may include inline heating or collection in a central storage tank. Refrigeration services using water defrost can also benefit from this closed loop energy process. During winter, condenser heat might be redirected to an internal heat exchanger to provide heating for manufacturing and process personnel and then directed outside in summer.
This translates to lower energy consumption and potentially increased life of your water heaters now that they do not have to work nearly as hard.
Increasing your energy efficiency has an immediate and direct effect on your financial bottom line by reducing daily expenditure on services.
Small systemic changes can also improve product quality, reduce down time and enhance safe operation. Caring for your bottom line is also good for the environment and reduces your facilities environmental footprint.
With every HVAC -R process there is an offset or 'waste', but instead of accepting these as just a fact of life, we like to take these by-products and consider ways we can cost effectively help to reduce your energy consumption.
Creating healthy, efficient, competitive business to business relationships is our goal. If you would like a free consultation with one of our HVAC and refrigeration specialists to see how we can optimise your facility, simply contact us below.
