Can we discuss brand names here?

Unknown

Or is that frowned upon? I've stumbled across a new type of water heating equipment that I think might interest a few of you. It comes out of Italy from a very solid company that has developed the technology to reverse the ammonia cooling process and make it work as a gas fired air source "heat pump". It exceeds 100% efficiency in terms of gas usage but the numbers are a little sketchy. If you figure straight input vs output they claim 126% but it actually uses less gas to move heat as the outdoor temp goes up. So I've seen charts that claim as much as 157% on a 65*F day when heating water to 120* output. Strangely enough I can't find that particular chart anymore. It may be under revisement. They also claimed 100% efficiency at -4*F ODT again with 120*F water output. I'm running mine at 107* right now but have decided to go to 110* with a 10* diff. I can heat and CHILL water (they need glycol) with them. They also offer a water source model that is even more efficient but I like the air sorce because you just drop them on a slab and plug them in. They require nat gas or propane, a 200v 15 amp circuit, one pump and connections to your pumping system. I am NOT their salesman, I am a contractor in the Northeast who installed a couple of these and REALLY likes the technology. My motivation would be to see a few more of these sell and the price on them start to come down a bit. I installed the first two of these in pretty much the Western Hemisphere. I've been in the HVAC business for 32 years now and can tell you THIS is some neat stuff.

Mark Hunt

No problemo


Brand names are discussed here all the time.

Mark H

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JohnNY

Hi, Mark.

I believe this is a thinly-veiled spam post.

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Unknown

Thanks...

> Brand names are discussed here all the

> time.

>

> Mark H

>

> _A

> HREF="http://www.heatinghelp.com/getListed.cfm?id=

> 238&Step=30"_To Learn More About This

> Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in

> "Find A Professional"_/A_



Just checking! The company is Robur, they have been around for 50 years. They bought up Servel and this is where they have taken it. The "GAHP" was field tested 2 years before it's release here in the US. I just took a trip to their US distributor in Evansville, Indiana for training. These 6 or so guys have about 100 years of Servel ammonia chiller/heater experience under their belts between them. I was duly impressed with the whole operation. The units draw slightly less than 5 amps too. Something on the order of 90% of the parts are identical to the standard chiller heaters and I saw LOTS of stock on their shelves. And above all, they are a nice bunch and bend over backwards to help. They also offer a digital control that plugs into the unit control board and will accept up to 16 mods of heat / cool and treat them like a plant. It monitors and stores all parameters, logs all alarms, distributes even run time amongst the units. etc etc... In Indiana they now have the software in hand to allow you to contact this control from a remote computer. The "DDC" is just as amazing as the GAHP and was actually one of my main motivations for the trip to Indy.

Unknown

Thanks...

Just checking! The company is Robur, they have been around for 50 years. They bought up Servel and this is where they have taken it. The "GAHP" was field tested 2 years before it's release here in the US. I just took a trip to their US distributor in Evansville, Indiana for training. These 6 or so guys have about 100 years of Servel ammonia chiller/heater experience under their belts between them. I was duly impressed with the whole operation. The units draw slightly less than 5 amps too. Something on the order of 90% of the parts are identical to the standard chiller heaters and I saw LOTS of stock on their shelves. And above all, they are a nice bunch and bend over backwards to help. They also offer a digital control that plugs into the unit control board and will accept up to 16 mods of heat / cool and treat them like a plant. It monitors and stores all parameters, logs all alarms, distributes even run time amongst the units. etc etc... In Indiana they now have the software in hand to allow you to contact this control from a remote computer. The "DDC" is just as amazing as the GAHP and was actually one of my main motivations for the trip to Indy.

Unknown

Uh, no it's not. It's a report on a piece of equipment I purchased and installed. Two actually. Nice try though.

EBEBRATT-Ed

I don't know about the water heaters but yes Robur has been around a long time. I have installed a few of there chiller/heaters.

The gas company in my area used to have a lot of the Servel and Robur stuff because it burned gas year round. There chillers used ammonia as the refrigerent as well.

Think I was Robur "certified" at one point.

ED

mtfallsmikey

Never heard of Robur but

I've played with many Arkla N.G. units in the past. Worked very well for it's time.

JohnNY

Never mind.

Sorry.

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Perry_3

Ammonia has been arround a long time

I believe it is the most efficient refrigerant arround. So the claims of higher efficiency sound right.

A number of large industrial refrideration units still use Ammonia.

Unfortunately, the reason Freon was developed is that ammonia leaks are a severe health hazard and can be deadly. There were incidents (and are incidents in commercial applications today).

While it is a great working fluid... Quite honestly, I question its use in residential applications.

I actually think that CO2 as a working fluid is where we are going for future automotive and residential air conditioning and heat pumps.

Perry

Unknown

Yup, Arkla was another name that came up in Indiana. I'm not familiar with that one though. I've worked on Servel in the past and never had major problems with them although I understand there WERE problems with the teflon diaphragm. They've changed that by reducing the stroke length and now say it's good for 30 years. Naturally, I say we'll know that for sure in about 30 years. They've also added a myriad of sensors connected to a new board that is designed mostly to prevent the machine from destroying itself due to neglect or poor / inadequate maintenance procedures. The board is universal to all their chiller heaters requiring only to be programmed for the particular application. Connected to the DDC and then the Net you will be able to call the thing up on your computer from anywhere and pretty much diagnose the problem from there. You could also register alarms remotely and in a lot of cases know your customer has a problem before they do AND know what you you need to fix it. That part is still in it's infancy here in the US though. As of the seminar two weeks ago they had the software in their hands and were going to be working on it. Again, I'm not their salesman. I swear on a stack of Dan's books (which I could actually do) I'm a contractor and I installed the first two in the whole western hemisphere right here in CT at some rich SOBs new mansion. Don't ask me how I got the job, but I did. I'm heating ~10,000 sq ft with radiant in the slabs, warming in strategic floors and hydro air to pick up the slack. 5 zones of floors, 6 zones of hydro with chilled water for A/C. I'm using 107* water to heat right now and it works fine but I'm going to 110* so I can widen the differential. All pumped away. He claims last month's gas bill was $347 and the electric was $150. He's still in construction, so these numbers will improve. Plus I got a few tweak tips from Evansville too. I'm telling you, this is cutting edge and all I'm trying to do is show it off to people that I know have the ability to appreciate it. I have a few other ideas that revolve around all this. Those ones I'm not telling you though. Not yet anyways.

Unknown

The ammonia portion of the system is contained entirely outside. The circuit is made entirely of cold rolled steel and stainless, so a catatrophic failure is very unlikely. Think about it. These Servels and Arklas have been around for ages installed in homes and commercial places. When was the last time you heard of any ammonia leak that made the paper because it resulted in death or injury? Besides, ammonia stinks pretty bad, even a small leak is instantly noticeable and makes you want to get away.

I did some research on the whole ammonia vs r-22 efficiency thing. It turns out ammonia can carry more heat than R-22 which means only that it requires LESS ammonia to do the same job as R-22 meaning the circuit can be designed smaller as it requires less flow. This means that there is really no difference in efficiency between them, a btu is a btu. Higher COOLING efficiency may be derived from the fact that we are not starting and running a heavy motor regularly. Higher efficiency when heating with ammonia is derived from the fact that we are extracting at least SOME heat from the outdoor air and COMBINING it with the heat provided by the gas. The GAHP will do this down to -20* ODT. What's your R-22 heat pump doing at -20*? Kaaking up a lung probably. Here's another killer, when these things go into defrost, they use 50% of output for defrost and STILL put 50% to the load.

ttekushan_3

Ammonia

I've long been interested in ammonia refrigeration since I was a kid seeing a Servel gas refrigerator. The whole concept of using a gas flame to make cold just totally messed with my mind! So naturally, I use one in the basement. Contrary to popular myth, the ammonia used in those fridges was never the hazard. It was supposedly the CO produced when the combustion chamber would get too dirty.

[And they do, but its only a 2000 btu burner (max) fer cryin' out loud. As it would turn out, ALL reported deaths were from units pulled from their piped natural gas installations and hooked up to a propane tank in small hunting cabins. Well, duh.]

Ammonia's used in both vapor compression and absorption systems. Gas air conditioning systems for residential use always had the ammonia absorption part outside, with circulating water (or glycol) run into the house. These systems are too small for ammonia concentrations outdoors to be hazardous. One whiff and I guarantee you'd distance yourself from it.

Ammonia also has the benefit of being "ozone depleting" safe. Even the replacement HFC's react in the ozone layer.

This brings absorption technology full circle, thank goodness.

The reason I say that is this: It improves the chance that micro-CHP with cooling (Trigeneration) will become available for the residential market. Waste heat from a gas micro turbine (like the Capstone) could drive the whole thing. Current Micro-CHP doesn't address air conditioning which means you still have to rely totally on the grid for what is the most electricity intensive process we have in our homes --and at the worst possible time --when the weather is hot, in the late afternoon.

Here's some info:

http://www.robur.com/pag_tecnologia.jsp?idl=2&id_sez=42

http://www.leonics.co.th/html/en/pd_ecp/gas_heatpump/gahp-w.php

-Terry

P.S. my dream system is gas micro turbine generating electricity, waste heat converted to steam for operation of a steam heating system and/or exchanged to water for DHW and hydronic heating and/or Hydronic air handler. Summertime waste steam would be routed to a Lithium Bromide (LiBr) vacuum/water chilling system for air conditioning. Water is the refrigerant so low temp/ low pressure steam would do the trick.

I think these micro technologies would lower our overall energy consumption, while relieving some of the stress on our grid. Even if we use no net metering and we still rely on the grid for most of our off-peak energy usage, the gains in energy conservation and the resulting safety margin on the grid would be a good thing, in my estimation.

EBEBRATT-Ed

I beleive Robur bought out Arkla/Servel some time ago.

Ammonia is a great refrigerant. Has great capacity. All the pipe, fittings, and components are made of steel--no copper or brass can be used

ttekushan_3

NH3 stuff from the IIAR

International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration:

http://www.iiar.org/index.html