It’s that time of year, the Holidays Season has come, as we’re approaching the end of this 2022.
Tempco would like to wish you all the best, exchanging Warm Greetings for a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year 2023.
Greetings Exchanger, from all the Tempco Team!
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For out last post of this 2022, before our seasonal greetings for the incoming winter Holidays, we gladly go back speaking about alternative and renewable energy. In Tempco we have indeed recently supplied an interesting cooling system installed on a pilot project for wave energy production. The system requires a series of temperature controls, dedicated to:
Although being quite simple, as the system includes some air heat exchangers and a titanium exchanger using sea water, the solution involves some design and engineering peculiarities. The overall system is indeed installed offshore in an open sea platform, and therefore it is exposed to remarkable careening. The support structure has then been engineered in order to stand this kind of solicitations, while the storage tanks for the hydraulic oil and the water, in addition to mechanical resistance, have to stand also the internal splashing while maintaining constant levels and without false alarms.
Furthermore, in order to ensure the reliability of the thermal transfer, the plant has been equipped with redundant control and circulation systems.
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Customization of each project has always been the core of Tempco’s engineering activities, in order to provide the best solution for every customer’s requirement. This is our mission in every industrial sector we are serving. Starting with the chemical and oil & gas sectors, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, but also in new renewable energies, we cautiously take care of the overall engineering and realization of every single request.
The mission of our team is to achieve the high standards requested by the customers with our solutions for temperature control, corresponding to the very same targets we are seeking as a company. Tempco is indeed the heart of the totality of operations and studies surrounding a project. We thus collaborate with specialized partners in several fields, with whom we coordinate the activities in order to achieve the optimal result for every order we are entrusted for. We believe indeed that is essential to offer a professional and careful service, and not only a fully functional and efficient application.
In order to ensure the perfect shape of a plant, from engineering up to the commissioning, always aiming at customization, we have decided to back up our team with a carefully selected network of industrial partners.
In the field of control panels and automation on our machines, we make sure that the machinery is provided with all the certifications required by the Country of installation, ATEX, CE, EAC, UL, a key condition in order to ensure a smart and efficient management. This same target drives the work of assistants responsible for software and PLC management within the plants, aimed at ensuring the maximum project performances to the end-user.
Speaking of installation, and in case of technically complex plants, we provide service and counseling in terms of plant configuration and piping thanks to our partners, solving every possible doubt and need of the customer. Especially when machinery has to be integrated in a pre-existing layout at customer’s facility.
When regulations establish severe standards in terms of engineering and manufacturing of pressure equipments, we are able to face the task thanks to partners specialized in ensuring the full compliance. With a special attention to ASME and PED regulations using certified WPS.
Thanks to the expertise and know-how of our team and to Tempco solid partnerships, we are able to manage the projects step by step, from the first idea through installation, and further on with maintenance in order to guarantee life long efficiency thanks to our specialized technicians. That’s how we are able to provide the most suitable solution for every thermoregulation need.
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In Tempco we believe that the future of sustainable mobility will not depend on actual battery electric vehicles, instead it will rely on hydrogen fuel cells technology as a renewable energy alternative solution ideal to achieve decarbonization targets.
We’ve already had the opportunity to talk about the different and several fuel cell technologies available on the market today, and of the multiple applications of heat exchangers within the power generation cycle with hydrogen. Tempco’s brazed plate heat exchangers H series applications are now also featured in the latest edition of the Hydrogen Guide 2023, just published by mcT Hydrogen.
The Hydrogen Guide 2023 offers a complete overview of the Hydrogen value chain in Italy, as well as a rich array of products, solutions and companies already operating in the Hydrogen sector. Tempco is proud to be among them.
The full Hydrogen Guide 2023 can be viewed and downloaded in PDF format at this link.
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In addition to the Five fingers rule, referring to the five parameters required for the correct sizing of a heat exchanger, there is also a Four fingers rule, which is employed when designing a thermal machine.
A thermal machine that can be a dry cooler, or a refrigerating group, or a cooling tower. In this case, there are indeed four parameters required for the proper sizing of the machinery: the kind of fluid to be cooled and its flow rate; the inlet temperature, which is the temperature of the fluid as it comes from the process; the outlet temperature, which is the temperature of the fluid required when it goes back to the process; the design ambient air temperature.
Ambient air temperature that in case of a chiller is related to the condensation process, in case of a dry cooler is the temperature of the air that will cool the fluid. And finally, in case of an evaporative tower is the wet-bulb temperature, a key value for the evaporation process.
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We’re currently supplying the third line for the cooling of furnaces employed in the production of carbon ceramic brakes. The Tempco customer has eventually standardized both the PLC logic and the selection of all the components, with an optimization as well of the exchangers, pumps, tanks, levels and interfaces for the application.
The line is intended to cool the furnaces that provide the thermal treatment of the discs of carbon ceramic brakes. The Tempco solution ensures the cooling of the furnaces, because in case of an improper, or even absent cooling process, the whole brakes batch could go wasted. But also the furnaces themselves could be damaged, with obviously an even greater loss.
The treatment achieved within the furnaces is therefore a critical step in this kind of application, as well as the accuracy and reliability of the cooling system. In order to ensure always the maximum reliability, the cooling plant has been equipped with redundant security systems, using tower water that feeds a heat exchanger and pumps providing the circulation of the water within the furnaces. With water in a closed circuit among the tower, the exchanger and the furnaces. In case of power failure, an emergency generator starts automatically with a valves circuit automatically opening, allowing mains water to flow within the plant decreasing the temperature of the furnaces, saving both the machinery and the production.
Finally, the customer is already planning a further expansion of the system with the addition of a fourth cooling line for the furnaces.
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Have you ever heard about the Five fingers rule when sizing and designing a heat exchanger? There are in fact some important data that are required in order to properly design a heat exchanger.
These data are: the fluid to be heated or cooled and its flow rate; the inlet temperature of the fluid, which is the temperature of the fluid when it arrives from the process; the expected outlet temperature of the fluid, which is the temperature of the fluid required to get back into the process; the kind of working fluid and how much of cooling or heating fluid is available, expressed in flow rate (kg/hour, cubic meters/hour); the temperature of the working fluid available.
Five data, five fingers: having these five parameters we can calculate a thermal balance, finding out all of the required data to properly size the exchanger. Let’s clearly start taking for granted that we already know the kind of fluid employed, working for example with a water/water exchanger, or water/oil or steam/water.
Someone could object that also the pressure drop is needed. But let’s suppose we have a fluid at a certain defined pressure, that allows to define a certain pressure drop value. Usually this is a value provided by the customer, or anyway we can indicate the ideal pressure drops in order to ensure the best performances of the exchanger. Otherwise, the customer will ask to recalculate the pressure drops available based on the pump or the pressure of the available fluid.
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A recent application of energy recovery from waters employed in an industrial laundry, for a customer in Puglia, represents for Tempco a further demonstration of the actual flexibility and versatility of TCOIL immersion exchangers. In the past we’ve already developed an application thanks to the free shape design offered by these kind of dimple jacket heat exchangers, employed on mangano ironers in industrial automatic ironing.
This new application of TCOIL immersion exchangers in industrial laundries is the first of its kind that we supply, and this is in fact a very brilliant and innovative solution, giving the customer a huge advantage in terms of energy saving. The customer has indeed water available at the temperature of 45-50° C, that is conveyed into the exchanger, with feeding water at 12° C that can therefore be heated at 35-40° C. The gain is about 20-25° C, and the water heated thanks to the recovered thermal energy is further heated in a boiler at 45° C ready for a new working cycle. A power saving of about 2/3 of the required power is thus obtained, so that for example the customer has a consumption of only 300 kW instead of 1.000 kW.
This is a very smart application, with heat recovery and a strong energy saving, that becomes even more interesting these days due to the huge increase in gas and energy costs. The increase of energy prices is indeed reducing the payback of a similar solution, drastically shortening the return of investment for the customers, because if once it would have been calculated in 10 years, now it potentially decreases to only 3 years. With then a ROI very much more accessible, even because this kind of solution, with stainless steel construction, offers a very much longer working life.
Once again, another example of the change of paradigm similar to the switch from gas to electrical heating, that we were speaking about in our video on the electrification of heating in thermoregulating units.
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There is a little trick that I’m explaining here related to the functioning and thermal transfer efficiency of heat exchangers: why the performances increase while the pressure drop increases?
The thing is simple: when we allow increased pressure drops on the fluid’s flow rate within an exchanger, and thus pressure drop of water circulating within the shell or the tubes, or on the two sides of a plate heat exchanger, we obtain a boost in performances. That’s because, being equal the section of the exchanger, increasing the pressure drop means that we are increasing the flow rate. Even better said, when we are accepting higher pressure drops, that means that we can reduce the passage section of the fluids and thus increase their flowing speed.
That leads to a more turbulent flow of fluids, which in the exchanger involves a higher number of collisions among the particles of the fluid and thus a higher thermal transfer rate. That’s why the thermal transfer efficiency increases too.
The same thing can be done for a pre-existing exchanger, where in order to boost the thermal transfer performances we can simply increase the flow rate, which correspond in quite a linear ratio to an increase of pressure drop and therefore of the performance of the heat exchanger.
This is a tiny good trick that is valid in the design of heat exchangers, both for plate heat exchangers or shell and tube exchangers, and for any kind of heat exchanger.
We’ve already spoken about CO2 refrigeration systems, a green and sustainable HVAC solution that not only eliminates the employ of synthetic refrigerants, but uses in addition a natural source, thus renewable and with zero environmental impact. The side product of CO2 refrigeration thermal cycle is indeed water.
For an application in HVAC for transport vehicles, both for the driving cabin and the passengers areas, Tempco has recently supplied super high pressure brazed plate exchangers, with a special design that enables the exchangers to withstand pressures up to 140 bar. The innovative HVAC solutions that employ CO2 for sustainable conditioning require indeed the employ of equipments and components especially designed for high operating pressure levels. A challenging new field of application for sustainable HVAC and brazed plate exchangers, that leads to new special engineering and construction deployments.
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