Industrial Air Conditioners

Air / Water Cooled Air Conditioner

Steady, clean, cool air for the rooms that keep your plant running, even beside the furnace.

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An industrial air conditioner standing at the end of an electrical room, between rows of switchgear panels

Product overview

Cool electrical rooms in the hottest corners of your plant

Our air / water cooled industrial air conditioner removes heat and moisture from the rooms that house your electrical, electronic and control equipment: switchrooms, drive rooms, motor control centre rooms, control rooms, UPS and battery rooms, E-houses and operator pulpits, in plants where the surrounding air can reach 50–55 °C.

It is built with one of two condensing methods. Air-cooled units reject the heat to outdoor air and need only power, so they can sit on a roof, an outer wall or an E-house skid. Water-cooled units reject it to your plant cooling water, so they can sit inside a hot, dusty building where no clean outdoor air is available.

It runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, filters the room air and conditions a controlled flow of filtered fresh air that holds the room at a slight positive pressure, keeping dust and corrosive gases out.

An industrial air conditioner standing at the end of an electrical room, between rows of switchgear panels
  • 22–27 °CTypical room condition, below 60 % RH
  • 50–55 °CSurrounding plant air it is designed for
  • 35 °C24-hour average limit it keeps you within
  • 24 hoursA day, 365 days a year, continuous duty

Benefits

The problems it solves

Every watt your drives and switchgear lose becomes heat in a closed room. Here is what that heat, and the plant air around the room, does to your equipment, and how the air conditioner stops it.

  • A room that overheats in minutes

    The problem

    A 30 kW drive loss in a room with 300 m³ of air would raise it by roughly 5 K per minute if no heat left the room.

    How it solves it

    The unit absorbs the equipment heat continuously, so room temperature stays constant while your plant runs at full load.

  • Plant air too hot to ventilate with

    The problem

    Near furnaces, kilns and casting lines, air at 45–55 °C cannot bring a room below the IEC 61439-1 average limit of 35 °C.

    How it solves it

    The refrigeration cycle keeps working in surrounding air of 50–55 °C, holding the room within equipment ambient ratings.

  • Drives derating and tripping

    The problem

    Output current is commonly derated above 40 °C ambient, so an overheated drive room forces motors below their required power, or trips them.

    How it solves it

    Your drives deliver their full rated current, and production continues through summer peaks.

  • Equipment ageing fast

    The problem

    Capacitor life roughly halves for every 10 K rise, and lead-acid battery life roughly halves for every 8–10 K above 25 °C.

    How it solves it

    Lower operating temperatures slow capacitor ageing, battery degradation and insulation breakdown.

  • Dust and corrosive gases

    The problem

    Conductive dust tracks across insulators, and hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide and chlorine corrode copper and silver on circuit boards.

    How it solves it

    Filtered fresh air and positive room pressure keep dust and corrosive gases away from your boards and contacts.

  • Condensation on busbars

    The problem

    In humid climates, moisture condenses on busbars and circuit boards, causing insulation breakdown and corrosion.

    How it solves it

    The coil removes moisture, keeping the room dew point well below your equipment's surface temperatures.

Where it’s used

Beside furnaces, kilns and melting tanks

The rooms that run your process often sit right next to its hottest, dustiest parts.

  • Molten metal pouring from a ladle in a foundry

    Iron and steel

    Drive and electrical rooms for blast furnaces, electric arc furnaces, continuous casters and rolling mills, and pulpit control rooms near hot metal.

  • A worker pouring concrete over steel reinforcement

    Cement and lime

    Electrical rooms near kilns, raw mills and packing plants, facing heavy dust loading and radiant heat.

  • Glowing glass bottles being formed on a production machine

    Glass and ceramics

    Furnace control rooms and forming line electrical rooms beside melting tanks and kilns.

Also aluminium and non-ferrous smelting, mining and mineral processing, oil, gas and petrochemicals, power generation and transmission, pulp and paper, chemicals and fertilisers, water and wastewater, ports, rail and transport, and data and telecom rooms within industrial sites.

How it works

One cycle, two ways to reject the heat

A vapour-compression cycle lifts the heat out of your electrical room and hands it to outdoor air or to your plant cooling water.

How an air or water cooled industrial air conditioner works: warm room air and filtered fresh air pass a filter and the evaporator, where boiling refrigerant cools and dries them, and a fan returns the cool air to the electrical room at low level. The compressor raises the refrigerant pressure and the heat is rejected either to outdoor air in a finned condenser with a fan (A) or to plant cooling water in a shell-and-tube condenser (B). The expansion valve returns the refrigerant to the evaporator. DrivesMCCUPS Electrical room 25 °C Heat out Outdoor air in A: air-cooled condenser 65–75 °C Or B: water-cooled 40–45 °C To cooling tower From cooling tower CompressorExpansionvalveCondensate out EvaporatorFanFilterFresh air 5 °C · 3.5 bar abs 12–16 °C 11.6 bar abs 12345Warm room or outdoor airCool, dry supply airCondensateHot refrigerantCold refrigerantHeat

  1. 1. Cool and dry the room airRoom air at 25 °C and filtered fresh air cross the evaporator, where R-134a boils at 5 °C and 3.5 bar absolute. The coil sits below the air's 13.9 °C dew point, so water condenses and leaves through the trapped drain, and the cool air returns at about 12–16 °C.

  2. 2. CompressThe compressor raises the vapour to the condensing pressure: 11.6 bar absolute for condensing at 45 °C, a pressure ratio of about 3.3. The hot gas leaves at roughly 60–90 °C.

  3. 3. A: reject it to outdoor airIn the air-cooled condenser, a fan blows outdoor air across a finned coil. The refrigerant condenses 10–20 K above the entering air, so at 55 °C ambient it condenses at about 65–75 °C.

  4. 4. B: or to plant cooling waterIn the water-cooled condenser, cooling water supplied at 30–32 °C and leaving at 35–37 °C carries the heat to your cooling tower or other plant heat sink. The refrigerant condenses at about 40–45 °C, whatever the air around the unit.

  5. 5. ExpandThe expansion valve drops the liquid to the evaporating pressure. Part of it flashes to vapour, cooling the rest to the evaporating temperature, and the mixture returns to the evaporator.

Each unit uses one condensing method, A or B, on the same refrigerant cycle. Figures for R-134a evaporating at 5 °C.

Get the full details

Our brochure covers it in detail, and our questionnaire tells us what we need to recommend the right one for your plant.

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