QUANTUM Air chillers from ENGIE Refrigeration are now available with optional heat recovery. Customers can thus reuse up to 100 per cent of the waste heat generated during the cold generation process – and use it for heating purposes, for example. This reduces resource use and improves energy efficiency. The feature is especially interesting for industrial enterprises, data centers, hospitals and hotels. How can waste heat be used effectively? Manufacturers and users of refrigeration systems around the world are currently grappling with this question. Suitable approaches can make an important contribution towards a reduction in energy costs. ENGIE Refrigeration now offers a forward-looking solution: the refrigeration and heating specialist from Lindau on Lake Constance, Germany, offers its QUANTUM Air chillers with heat recovery as an option. Water-cooled QUANTUM chillers have been available with optional heat recovery for many years – and customers are still running them successfully. As this feature has many advantages, ENGIE Refrigeration now offers it for the QUANTUM Air as well.

Sophisticated technology reduces costs

The basis is an ingenious technical solution: the experts at ENGIE Refrigeration integrate an additional heat exchanger in the QUANTUM Air chiller. This exchanger makes it possible to conduct the heat generated during the cold generation process to a defined heat process – such as production hall heating or warm water supply in offices; otherwise, this heat would be released into the environment, unused, via the air-cooled condensers. Users thus utilize free heat energy that they would otherwise have to obtain from an additional heat generator. This heat energy can be used either completely or partially in what is referred to as combined operation. To this end, the waste heat is transferred to a heat circuit via a parallel flooded shell and tube condenser. The chiller fans now run at partial load or not at all.