A super-sized desuperheater?

don_185

a great idea Dave.I would think you would still need a place to reject the heat when all the tanks are up to temp
and the ac is still running.

Oil return could be a issue on off cycle because of migration when refrigerant along with the oil wants to be drawn to the coldest lowest pressure areas.

In search of............

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)_1

Hey Prof....

Here's an interesting conundrum. Commercial account where previous hacks removed water-chilled condensers and installed air-cooled units - in a confined space where there is no ventillation. D'OH! It's only about 135F in the concrete sweat box and their units are struggling. From the sounds of the units, they're getting beat up too.

The super asked me to price out moving the units to outdoors, which is not an easy or cheap solution due to the building's construction and location - or - install a ventillation system to extract the heated air, which also means bringing in fresh air - again, this not be cheap.

I suggested they might want to move the heat-energy off into their very large domestic hot water system, which - as the crow flies (if he could fly through concrete walls & floors) isn't too far away.

Sooooooooo, lots of questions. Any recommended desuperheater brands? Sizing of desuperheaters in an app like this? Oversizing desuperheaters an issue? Oil migration an issue?

Seems like a no-brainer to capture the otherwise wasted heat and improve the refrigerant cycle efficiency while making almost-free hot water.

Marty

none

A desuperheater isn't going to eliminate the need for ventilation or something. How many units and what kind ?

Dave Yates (GrandPAH)_2

thanks

That confirms our thinking. Storage isn't an issue as they have two restaurants, banquet facilities and 210 guest rooms. A moderately sized tank would see a continual flow of cold water and, most lklely, never get past warm. I'd dump it into the 170/180 F tanks to eliminate any Legionella. The super-hot tanks get dumbed down as they feed the larger 1,000 gal storage tank. The racks run 24/7/365. Might be able to pretty much eliminate the condenser fan's parasitic energy too, although I'm a bit concerned about no air being drawn over the compressors.

DX flat plate HX.

don_185

No worry

No worry with the comp overheating.As long as your superheat temps are not too high that should not be a issue.

I've converted a many of air to air over to water to air over the years with just adding a tubeintube hx and not once
did I have a issue with the comp over heating.

Skip the flat plate and stack a few tube in tube hx.