Back to renewables and energy saving in applications involving second level energy, in other words thermal energy. After the video on refrigerating groups, another field offering important and interesting opportunities in terms of energy saving are free coolers and evaporative towers.

These are cooling systems employed in case of industrial production processes requiring cooled water at temperatures above 30-35° C. With such temperature levels it is possible to avoid the employ of refrigerating groups, and thus eliminating the energy consumption related to compressors and the complicated refrigeration circuit, the use of freon and so on.

Using free coolers, or dry coolers, and cooling towers, every saving can be therefore implemented fans equipped with EC motors, with electronic control and inverters. A sensing probe measures indeed the temperature of the water, and based on a predefined set-point it provides the adjustment of the power required to dissipate the right amount of energy to achieve the cooling task.

In the past, the costs of EC motors and inverters were too high to justify the investment cost. Alternative energy saving solutions were thus employed, such as using multi-fans installments with stepped functioning, partializing the number of functioning fans and limiting the power consumption based on the real demand.

Nowadays, the costs of EC motors allow a very interesting ROI. The solution is indeed more and more often required by our customers, and gladly embraced because it allows the obtain not only significant and effective energy savings, but also a reduction in maintenance costs. It’s clear indeed that the wear of a fan working for six or even nine months per year at a lower speed will be much less than the wear of a fan working at 100% of its capacity.

EC motors and inverter technologies are very much consolidated in the market today, and can thus be widely employed in industrial applications but also in conditioning, plants that have to work 365 days per year. Clearly, if a system works only during the summer, the ROI will probably be longer. But the opportunity is worth to be evaluated anyway, because during the night hours the temperature decreases, leading the an increased efficiency of the exchanger and requiring a less amount of air. So that energy saving can be achieved too.

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