Industrial Air Conditioners

Crane Air Conditioner

A cool, clear cabin for your operator and cool, clean drives for your crane, however hot the plant around them runs.

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A blue crane air conditioner with a side air box, a filter housing and a condenser fan

Product overview

Cool cabins and drive rooms, right where the heat is

Our crane air conditioner is a self-contained cooling unit that mounts on the roof or rear wall of your operator cabin or crane electrical room, and travels with the crane along the runway, trolley girder or boom. It needs only an electrical supply from the crane, with no ducts or chilled water lines to follow the crane's movement.

It keeps two air streams apart. Your cabin air circulates across the cold evaporator and comes back cooler and drier, while outside air carries the heat away across the condenser. Only a metered, filtered quantity of fresh air enters, enough to ventilate the cabin and hold it at a slight positive pressure, so outside dust, fumes and moisture stay out.

It is built to deliver its rated cooling at high ambient temperature, to keep working with its intake exposed to dust, and to tolerate the shock, sway and vibration of a working crane without refrigerant leaks.

A slim blue wall-mounted crane air conditioner with a filter panel and controls
  • 50 °C or moreOutside air it rejects heat to
  • 24–26 °CCabin held near, for a full shift
  • 40 °CCommon drive rating it keeps you within
  • About 0.7 kg/hWater taken from 50 m³/h of humid fresh air

Benefits

The problems it solves

A crane cabin is small, glazed on several sides and sits above heat, dust or salt. Here is what that does to your operator and your drives, and how the air conditioner stops it.

  • Heat-stressed operators

    The problem

    Heat stress reduces concentration and lengthens reaction time, while your operator lifts ladles of liquid metal or loads over people.

    How it solves it

    A cabin held near 24–26 °C with moderate humidity lets your operator work a full shift without accumulating heat strain.

  • Drives tripping mid-lift

    The problem

    Drives are commonly rated for 40 °C and derated above it, and an over-temperature trip stops the crane mid-lift.

    How it solves it

    The electrical room stays within the ambient limits of your drives and PLCs, so over-temperature stoppages do not interrupt production.

  • Electronics ageing fast

    The problem

    A common manufacturer rule is that electrolytic capacitor life halves for every 10 K rise in operating temperature.

    How it solves it

    Lower operating temperature slows capacitor ageing and other temperature-driven failures in your drives.

  • Conductive dust

    The problem

    Steel plant, coal and port dust absorbs moisture on circuit boards and forms leakage paths, causing tracking and flashover.

    How it solves it

    Recirculated, filtered air and positive pressure keep conductive and abrasive dust off your electronics and out of the operator's breathing zone.

  • Misted glazing

    The problem

    Humid air mists the inside of the cabin glazing and wets circuit boards when the crane parks overnight.

    How it solves it

    Air crossing the cold evaporator gives up its moisture, so the glazing stays clear and your operator sees the hook and load.

  • Salt and corrosive air

    The problem

    Coastal and industrial atmospheres fall in ISO 9223 corrosivity categories C4 and C5, attacking terminals, pins and relay contacts.

    How it solves it

    Enclosure air stays recirculated and filtered, which removes most of that exposure from your terminals and contacts.

Where it’s used

Wherever your cranes work in heat, dust or salt

The unit serves the operator cabin, the crane electrical room, or both on the same crane.

  • Molten metal pouring from a ladle in a foundry

    Steel plants and foundries

    Ladle, charging and teeming cranes in melt shops, and slab, coil and billet cranes in rolling mills, above molten metal and hot product.

  • A worker pouring concrete over steel reinforcement

    Cement plants

    Clinker and raw material gantry and grab cranes near kilns and coolers.

  • Electricity pylons and power lines at sunset

    Power generation

    Coal yard cranes, turbine hall cranes and ash handling cranes.

Also aluminium smelters, ports and container terminals, bulk material handling, glass manufacturing, shipyards, tower cranes on construction sites, pulp and paper, waste-to-energy plants, offshore and marine deck cranes, and mining and mineral processing.

How it works

Cool the cabin, reject the heat outside

A sealed refrigeration circuit lifts heat out of your cabin and releases it to outside air that is hotter than the cabin itself.

How a crane air conditioner works: warm cabin air and filtered fresh air pass a filter and the evaporator, where boiling refrigerant cools and dries them, and a fan blows the cool air back across the cabin. The compressor pumps the heat through a sealed partition to the condenser, whose fan rejects it to the hot outside air, and the expansion valve returns the refrigerant to the evaporator. Operator cabin 25 °C Radiant heat Sealed partition Heat out Outside air in 50 °C or more Condenser CompressorExpansionvalveCondensate out EvaporatorFanFilter 5 °C · 3.5 bar abs 18.9 bar abs 65 °C Filteredfresh air 12345Warm cabin and outside airCool, dry supply airCondensateHot refrigerantCold refrigerantHeat

  1. 1. Cool and dry the cabin airWarm cabin air and filtered fresh air pass the filter and the evaporator, where refrigerant boils at 5 °C and about 3.5 bar absolute. The air cools below its dew point, its water condenses on the coil and drains away, and the fan sweeps the cool, dry air across the upper cabin and the windscreen.

  2. 2. CompressThe compressor draws in the refrigerant vapour and compresses it to about 18.9 bar absolute, a pressure ratio of about 5.4, raising its temperature well above the condensing temperature.

  3. 3. Reject the heat outsideThe condenser fan draws outside air across the hot coil, and the refrigerant condenses to liquid at 65 °C. At a real-cycle COP of 2.5, a unit delivering 3 kW of cooling rejects about 4.2 kW to outside air.

  4. 4. ExpandThe expansion valve drops the liquid back to the evaporating pressure. Part of it flashes to vapour and cools the rest to 5 °C, ready to take up heat again.

  5. 5. Keep the cabin sealedA sealed, insulated partition divides the cabin side from the outside side, so the two air streams exchange heat only through the refrigerant. A small flow of filtered fresh air keeps the cabin above ambient pressure, so dust and fumes cannot get in.

Figures for R134a evaporating at 5 °C and condensing at 65 °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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