About the authorMike Fisher has over 35 years of experience with refrigeration systems. This background includes; service, installation, equipment manufacturing, research and development, project management, consulting engineering, system design and packaged systems.
Energy conservation is a very interesting field. With the advances of technology we have items like solar panels for energy generation or water heating, battery technology for energy storage and new forms of lighting like LED lamps. A recent article on LED lamps caught my attention recently and I thought it would be a good example for comparison to ammonia refrigeration systems.
When you try to evaluate the cost of operation what do you look for? The total of the monthly utility bill, the cost of energy, or something else? Utility charges are based on rate tariffs. These are the prescribed methods for billing users for the electricity and natural gas they consume.
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Ammonia refrigeration systems are complex by their very nature. A system can be comprised of a mixture of various manufacturers equipment such as evaporators, compressors, control valves, condensers, and vessels. Secondly, you can have various forms of each of these components. Screws or reciprocating compressors. Evaporative or shell & tube condensers. Flooded, direct expansion, or liquid overfeed coil circuiting.
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I often see people interested in heat recovery asking questions about desuperheating. This mode of heat recovery is based on circulating a fluid such as water through a heat exchanger to aid in transferring heat from one location to another. One of the major issues with utilizing the superheat of the discharge gas from a refrigeration systems is; there is not a lot of available heat! The available superheat in the discharge gas from a compressor is only a small percentage of the the total available heat energy.
I usually observe the surroundings and watch for the color change of the trees during this time of the year. As I was driving back from a project this last week I happened to notice something I thought was slightly ironic. At one bend in the highway there were patches of steam over the horizon. These are certainly more visible during this time of year with cooler ambient weather conditions. As I drove closer to the facility the source of the steam became apparent.
For those who own and operate large ammonia refrigeration systems the consequences of this legislation may be far reaching.
Disregarding any political or environmental viewpoints on this subject one issue that should be interesting to discover is the impact of this legislation on associated energy costs, if the bill passes.
