Optimization Strategy & Energy Savings Of Water-Cooled Chiller Plant System

Water-cooled chiller cooling systems are commonly used for air conditioning purposes in tropical countries like Malaysia. Chillers need to be optimized to increase the performance of the system and achieve energy savings. Understanding the interaction between each sub systems and exploiting their strength is the key to system optimization. The significance of this study is to provide more insight on how to optimize the water-cooled chiller system. For that, a thermodynamic model is developed to evaluate the energy saving opportunities in the system. Using an iterative procedure on finding the thermodynamic properties and equations of the system, data on the performance and energy savings of the system can be calculated for every part load conditions. From the results of the paper, there is improvement in the performance of the chiller plant system when variable speed pumps are used. Using a cooling load profile of a typical office building, electricity can be saved up to 80% for pump power and 18% for the total plant energy usage. Application of variable speed pump in the system can save significant amount of energy that conventional chiller plant system used in excess nowadays