How Heat Moves Through Chilled Water System

It's fun to think about the full cycle chillers have to move heat.

I'm going to nerd a bit here but enjoy the journey.

I've talked previously how heat is energy and we are moving energy between fluids to relocate it where we want it/doesn't matter. The energy transfer is accomplished by creating temperature differences between the fluids. 

Now fluids are more than liquids as gases can be viewed as fluids as well. Another way to say this is mediums.

Now lets follow the transfer path in a comfort cooling example. 

Heat in the office comes from solar load, human load, and computers/equipment. 

A fan is used to move medium 1 (air) across a chilled water coil creating less hot/humid air.

The colder water medium 2 in the coil absorbs sensible and latent heat from the air. 

This chilled water flows back to the chiller evaporator with it's gained sensible energy. 

The water flows through the chiller evap tubes where colder refrigerant medium 3 on the other side of tubes absorbs the waters heat/energy. 

A compressor moves the refrigerant to a condenser and raises the temperature of the refrigerant.

The hot refrigerant now transfers it's heat/energy to the condenser water medium 4 in the heat exchanger tubes. 

The condenser water is taken to a tower/ground loop/water source to transfer that energy somewhere outside of our office in medium 5. 

With a chilled water system that energy goes on quite the journey and passes through a few hands to get to it's next destination. Now you can take this even deeper if you wish. This is some of the fun thought experiments I enjoy. 

Thanks for joining the ride through my pondering. 

MTT

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