Projects
COOLING WHILE
SAVING WATER AND ELECTRICITY
By Ntsako Khosa
Despite its capital cost and the perception around using water for evaporative
cooling, Baltimore Aircoil Company opted to install an adiabatic cooler at the
Garden Centre in Cape Town that saved water and electricity.
“
“The installation of the equipment and piping was completed
by Mechanical Cooling and Maintenance; the piping connects
the adiabatic units to the condenser coil of existing Trane
RTHB chillers. It was mostly a smooth project with no
significant problems encountered,” says the Cape Town
representative of BAC, Duncan McIvor of Baltimo.
GETTING IT RIGHT
Although the supply of make-up water quality was a
challenge and caused blockages with the solenoid valve,
which would supply water to the precooling pads. “This
issue was resolved by adding a strainer up-stream of the
valve. There was a concern also around noise levels of the
adiabatic unit. This was addressed by installing velocity
recovery duct to the EC fans (AxiTop) to give the unit
additional performance thereby allowing us to reduce the
The current environmental situation in Cape Town tends to
drive engineers away from specifying evaporative cooling
equipment on HVAC applications, since during a water outage,
no cooling will be possible, as well as the cost of water relating
to the water usage of a fully evaporative solution. We cannot
deny that it is thermodynamically impossible to be more
efficient with a fully air-cooled solution compared to a fully
evaporative solution. The adiabatic unit takes the best of both
options, to create overall system efficiency with water saving,”
says head of marketing and refrigeration, Garid Glenn.
Commissioned in May 2019, the client specified
Baltimore Aircoil to replace an existing open circuit tower
and the tower should provide low water consumption, have
the ability to maintain the same water temperatures as
the original towers and provide free cooling capability to
implement at a later stage.
The Baltimore Aircoil adiabatic units installed in Cape Town.
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RACA Journal I February 2020
www.hvacronline.co.za