Air Cooled Reciprocating Chillers

Air cooled reciprocating chillers were the king of the market for a long time.

But how things change. 

These chillers were using semi-hermetic reciprocating compressors. 

Copeland, Carlyle, and Trane being the leaders here. 

These were great because they basically worked like a car motor and were very serviceable in the field. 

There was some decent flexibility for staging for their time. 

You could turn them off or on but you could also put unloaders on the compressor heads. 

You could go with mechanical or electric unloaders too!

Granted, by todays standards this is mediocre at best…

The ability at the time to have multiple compressors in the same circuit with the lead compressor have unloading heads was truly a step forward. 

These chillers operate on the same fundamentals as the reset.

They liked a 8-12F suction superheat. 

If a compressor have a bad valve, oil pump, or terminal plate, it was an easy swap and on your way. 

Most of the time you could completely isolate the compressor so these repairs didn’t require a complete recovery. 

There are a lot of chillers that could bring this back…..

A DX shell & tube evaporator was the most common I have seen. 

So expecting a 8-10F approach at high load was good. 

Reciprocating chillers are not gone but there aren’t to many left. 

Whether replaced or retrofitted to a screw. 

Oh ya, screws kicked these compressors out the chiller market. Just couldn’t compete. 

MTT

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