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Frequently Asked Questions
What two decisions separate these machines?
Where the heat goes, and how the refrigerant is compressed.
The two are independent of each other.
Heat rejection decides what plant the building must carry.
Compression decides the capacity band and part-load behaviour.
Answering them out of order produces an incoherent shortlist.
When is an air-cooled machine the right answer?
When the building should not take on a water system.
It needs only an outdoor position with free air movement.
No tower, no condenser pumps, no water treatment.
The penalty is condensing temperature on the hottest days.
That is exactly when the cooling load peaks.
What does water cooling oblige the building to carry?
A cooling tower, condenser pumps and water treatment.
All three last as long as the plant does.
In exchange it condenses against wet-bulb, not dry-bulb.
That is a real and permanent efficiency gain.
The margin widens as the weather gets hotter.
How does compressor type map to size?
Scroll covers the small and middle sizes.
Screw covers the middle and upper range.
Centrifugal is the large-tonnage machine.
Scroll follows load by staging whole compressors.
Centrifugal is limited at the bottom by surge.
What makes absorption different from the rest?
It is driven by heat rather than by shaft power.
Waste heat, steam or direct gas firing will run it.
Read as a COP its efficiency looks poor.
That is the wrong measure for what it does.
Its purpose is to move load off the electrical supply.
Which groups here are not alternatives to the others?
Process and portable machines, and the parts group.
A process chiller cools a process, not a building.
Its load does not follow the weather.
The parts group serves plant already installed.
Neither belongs on a shortlist with the others.
What should be settled before comparing prices?
Whether the building will accept a water system.
That single answer removes half the market.
Then the capacity band narrows the compressor type.
Only then do quoted prices describe like for like.
Comparing across the two routes tells you nothing.