Industrial Water Chiller COP Introduction & the China Standard

Something more than just the price of chiller often costs specific consideration for product competitiveness. There are environment protection and energy-saving to be considered. Whether product from industrial water chiller is energy-saving or not can be reflected by COP values. The COP (coefficient of performance) is the comparison between actual loading capacity and actual input power (not include water pump power) during water chiller’s operation under rated working environment and specific conditions. It reflects water chiller performance of evaporation transformed into cooling capacity (eg.: if the COP value of a set of industrial water chiller is 2.5, it means with 1kW of electric-energy consumption can acquire 2.5kW of cooling capacity. The larger of COP values the more efficient the machine) by unit of input power in refrigerating process. All values of COP should be tested by simulation of working condition (environment temperature, chilling water inlet temperature, chilling water outlet temperature, cooling water inlet temperature, cooling water outlet temperature) for effective testing results. 

In order to saving energy and lowers energy consumption, there’re relative national standards of industrial water chiller stipulated that the COP of water chiller must reach corresponding values. Now, the China standard follows GB/T 19577-2004 Minimum Allowable Values of the Energy Efficiency & Energy Efficiency Grades for Water Chillers, which classifies the energy efficiency to 1,2,3,4,5 five grades.

The table shows that the COP requirement of different refrigerant in same grade is different. The larger of total refrigerant requires the higher COP value. In the same grade, the COP values of water-cooled water chillers are much higher than the air-cooled models. Besides, the standard stipulates only the water chiller COP reaches the 5th grade that can be in production and sales, otherwise the production would be illegal. Meanwhile, water chiller’s COP only correspondingly larger than the regulated value of the 2nd grade that can be defined as the energy-saving product.  
  
At present, as the country has low power control of industrial water chiller’s production. There’re lots of manufacturers took low price to attract customer. During the production, they did not input enough efforts and use low performance materials which lead product’s COP can not reach at least the lowest requirement of national standard. However, they labeled their products had reached the lowest national standard and even reached the 1st grade in energy-saving degree. Shini produces its products with integrity and has its own laboratory to test water chiller’s performance. The water chiller performance of CFC-free refrigerant R410 series had all been tested by our laboratory. By response of national energy-saving appeal, Shini will newly launched new generation of CFC-free refrigerant R410 series water chillers with COP which had exceeded the requirement above the 1st grade.