When you think about it, the most primal source of cooling in the world is Evaporative Cooling. Humans would celebrate rainfall because the falling of water on their bodies, combined with the breezy wind, made them feel so fresh that they realised that this is the best way to keep things naturally cool. Centuries hence, the technology is still one of the world’s most effective ones.
But like every technology, this one too has undergone its developments. With the passing years, the development has leaped from basic systems to ones with increased heat transfer surface, having better fans, having a better water dispersion system etc.
Güntner, a company which firmly believes in the philosophy of constantly improving, took a look at some of the best evaporative condensers in the world and then went ahead & made it better.
Stainless Is Better
Traditional systems in the world today include a galvanized steel unit with a serpentine coil in the case of a condenser and a mesh in the case of a cooling tower. The use of galvanized steel has been around since the 1950s, and owing to the material’s large presence and lower price, is a very widely preferred base material for the manufacturing of an evaporative condenser. Some of the issues faced are:
- More water usage is an expensive and environmentally harmful endeavour
- Chemicals used in passivation, maintenance and water treatment
- Heat transfer area reduces over time due to the scale build up on coil by water. It increases the maintenance cost
- Onsite installation is tedious and start up passivation is a necessity
- Energy consuming belt driven fans, which have a lower efficiency
- Controls are more complicated
- Overall running costs are high.
Güntner Development
- Use stainless steel
- Make a more efficient system, which uses less water and can run at higher cycles of concentration
- Superior material, which is self passivating, can work with less treated water and eliminates usage of chemicals
- Stainless steel 304 has a low propensity to scale, so water treatment and maintenance costs are significantly reduced
- Onsite installation is very easy (eliminates a lot of equipment and procedures needed)
- Highly efficient direct drive fans
- Intelligent Güntner Motor Management.
The Güntner ECOSS stainless steel evaporative condensers are a proof of our ecological commitment to environmental and industrial concerns.
Galvanized coatings incur the requirement of a lot of chemicals in the water treatment programmes, and new laws and more stringent regulations regarding the discharge of chemical waste means that the maintenance of the evaporative condensers has become difficult and expensive. Owners of the units have to keep all the above costs and regulations in mind while planning their facility and the decisions are made easier with the ECOSS.
The Güntner HydroBLU control technology addresses the economic and environmental impacts of diminishing water resources. This eco-friendly design minimizes water treatment requirements and allows for operation at higher cycles of concentration with reduced blow-down and lower make up water requirements.
The star of the unit’s design is in the 304L stainless steel coil and casing, which nullify any zinc or lead in the blow-down. There is no white or red rust and thereby a major reduction in chemical cleaning agents usage.
The fans of the unit are single axis, direct drive fans. The motors being mounted directly on the impellars means taking out the transmission losses and degenerative losses incurred with a dual axis belt driven fan.
Belt tightening, replacement and bearing and greasing of the motors are a thing of the past as the direct drive motors are selflubricating with high efficiency bearings. The motors are available in both AC and EC technology and have a very good acoustic characteristic. The multiple fan motors provide increased redundancy and the openable fan decks are extremely ergonomic for maintenance and checks.
Installation of the huge units is one of the most key factors to consider in a project setup. The ECOSS comes in 2 parts, which are easily mounted without the requirement of sealer tapes, drift pins, screw tappers and the extra workload that comes with them. The Coil-Fan and the basin sections can be easily aligned and mounted with a smaller crane than usual.
EC Fans are optionally available on all units. Compared to conventional systems, it is possible to save energy using the EC fans with the Güntner Motor Management (GMM).
EC motors are equipped with optimized power electronics, especially designed and developed for these motors. Compared to an AC motor, the motor of the EC fans have no windings in the rotor but instead have a permanent magnet. Due to this, there are no induction and slip losses in the rotor. Especially, for speed controlled applications, the EC technology offers a larger variety of benefits like low capacity motor management, automatic parameterisation, function and selective fan shut down. The flexibility of this on the ECOSS can be set by the factory itself so that the unit you get is a plug and play.
Taking developments into consideration, the Güntner ECOSS advantage can be seen to be almost 70% more economically viable than the competition.
