Tempco Blog articles

Energy saving, EC motors and cooling

18/10/2019

Let’s present today a retrofit solution developed for a supermarket, where traditional AC motors have been replaced with electric EC motors that can be regulated with 0-10 V signal. The substitution has been done on the totality of refrigerated counters, evaporators and chillers employed in the supermarket.

The installation of electric fans with EC motor and external rotor granted significant advantages, first of all allowing a reduction in power consumption, with an annual saving of 138.970 kWh, approx 1/3 of the amount of energy previously consumed by AC motors.

Despite a higher initial investment, the installation of EC motors had thus a second relevant benefit, due to the fact that this kind of technology doesn’t require maintenance costs, while maintenance costs for 10 years of operations on AC motors can be calculated in 72.000 €.

The retrofit substitution of AC motors with EC motors on the totality of refrigerated counters, evaporators and chillers in the supermarket granted then an annual saving of 21.527 €.

In this specific application, considering an energy cost of 0,11 €/kWh, the comparison for the totality of equipments is as follows:

Overall costs AC motors in 10 years:
– 12.800 € initial investment
– 72.000 € maintenance
– 381.568 € operating costs

Total amount on 10 years: 466,368 € – annual cost of 46.637 €

Overall costs EC motors in 10 years:
– 22.400 € initial investment
– 228.701 € operating costs

Total amount on 10 years: 251.101 € – annual cost of 25.110 €

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Heating and cooling load calculation in pharma thermoregulation

11/10/2019

A special video on the road today, to explain how to calculate the heating and cooling load, that is the amount of thermal energy to be added or removed to a certain production process in order to achieve a required temperature regulation. In this case we face the problem applied to the heating or cooling load for a thermoregulating unit on a pharmaceutical reactor.
There is a wide range of machinery and equipments in use in the pharma and chemical industry, and the calculation method of the heating and cooling load depends on the kind of machine employed.

Anyway, the most common way is to consider the volume of the reactor to be thermoregulated, and the physical properties of the kind of product processed, in particular its specific weight and specific heat capacity. Following, the heating and cooling curves required by the application must be known, that is the starting and final temperatures to be reached, and the time frame required to complete the heating and cooling cycles of the products.

At this point the calculation is obtained with a simple formula, multiplying the volume of the product x specific weight x specific heat capacity, multiplied x the temperature change, and all divided by the time unit. The resulting are the kcal, or kw/h required to heat or cool the product. The formula must then be applied to all the up and down temperature ramps, to find out the most challenging one that will serve as base for the correct sizing of the thermoregulating unit.

Another case is represented by the distillation of products. In this case the reference heat or cooling load to determine the size of the unit is obtained, in addition to the temperature ramps calculation, by another one related to the distillation process, multiplying the amount of kgs/hour of distilled product x the latent heat of vaporization.

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Thermoregulating unit in pharma sector

04/10/2019

The thermoregulation unit in these photos has been designed for application in the pharmaceutical sector. It is quite a standard solution, with heating circuit employing steam and brazed plate heat exchangers in AISI 316/copper. The cooling is achieved with chiller water. The temperature tolerance ensured is +/- 2° C.

The unit is equipped with double automatic stand-by pump, and completed with remote management function of the set-point.

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Water cooling essentials in a cooling tower

27/09/2019

Cooling towers are lean and simple machines aimed to cool down water employed in industrial production processes of any kind. These are simple machines because the only component moving is the electrical fan, and the cooling process is achieved through a direct air/water contact heat exchange, without exchange pipes.

The water to be cooled enters in direct contact with the air in the cooling tower, allowing the water to be cooled at a lower temperature compared to the environmental air temperature.

This is achieved thanks to the latent heat of vaporization that brings a wind chill effect, taking advantage of the amount of water that evaporates in direct contact with air, removing calories. The amount of heat removed by water’s evaporation is a relevant amount, called latent heat of vaporization, and is equal to about 550-600 kilocalories per kg of water evaporated.

And so, a cooling tower is a machine that allows to cool water in a very efficient way with a contained energy consumption. On the opposite, there is a consumption of water, dissipated due to evaporation, that must be reintegrated in the circuit in a greater quantity than the quantity of water dissipated, in order to dilute the concentration of salts obtained as a consequence of the evaporative process.

The reference temperature for the cooling potential that can be achieved in a cooling tower is the wet bulb temperature, that is the environmental temperature measured with a thermometer with a moist bulb. Usually, wet bulb temperature in a city like Milan, for example, is 26° C in the worse conditions, in July, when ambient temperature rises up to 35-36° C. In these conditions, the wet bulb temperature is 10° C lower than environmental temperature, so that it’s possibile to cool down water at a temperature 3-4° C higher than wet bulb temperature, depending on the design and sizing of the cooling tower.

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Thermoregulation unit in pharma lab

20/09/2019

The processing of pharma products requires well defined temperature loops that must be thermoregulated, as we’ve already faced the argument in many other occasions. Recently, we’ve supplied a new thermoregulating unit for a pharma lab, intended for heating and thermoregulation of injectable solutions.

The thermoregulating unit is employed for laboratory tests and production, combined with an equipment that forces an injectable solution to achieve a defined thermal cycle.

The main target of the application is to obtain high precision temperatures and to maintain them within a strict range of tolerances that can be programmed/setted-up.
The solution is completed by a remote interface for the recording with data log of the results. The thermoregulation unit is in full inox execution for employ in pharma environment.

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Dimple jacket exchangers in industrial laundry ironers

13/09/2019

A new and curious application of TCOIL dimple jacket exchangers we’ve recently made involves these flexible type of heat exchangers in the manufacture of flatwork ironers. These are big industrial mangano ironers employed in big industrial laundries for automatic ironing.

We’ve realized the cradles of these big dryers and ironers with a special TCOIL, with upper side with higher thickness and a polished surface, and lower side inflated. Diathermic oil flows inside the inflated plates. The TCOIL in the ironer can indeed be heated using steam or hot oil, to reach a temperature of 120/130° C.

The laundry is passed between the cradle and the roll mounted as it can be seen in the images. Sort of huge ironers, these mangano ironers are commonly employed to dry and iron flat laundry, such as sheets, bath towels and tablecloths.

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Free cooling for heat dissipation in inverter testing

06/09/2019

This past week we have installed a cooling plant for heat dissipation of resistive electrical resistances employed in the simulation of working conditions of inverters. The plant was commissioned by CRS, a company based in Merate (LC, Italy) that designs and manufactures inverters and industrial power equipment.

The company needed a cooling plant for heat dissipation of electrical power loads during the testing of its inverters. We’ve supplied a dry cooler system for outdoor installation and a distribution and pumping circuit of cool water serving the two testing areas.

The installation has been achieved with maximum customer’s satisfaction. The distribution system has been realized on-site, and all the piping employed is made by stainless steel.

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Tempco and the Summertime…!

12/08/2019

Inflate your air mattresses and have a great August!

In Tempco we wish you this way great Summer!

VIDEO: Inflating TCOIL dimple jacket exchangers

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Self draining Dry cooling, cooling efficiency in every season

26/07/2019

We’re facing today the topic of dry cooling, and in particular of self draining dry cooling. First of all, a dry cooler is an air/water exchanger that employs ambient air as cooling media to cool down the temperature of water. Compared to an evaporative cooling tower, a dry cooler offers simple installation, easy management and employs water in closed circuit, never in direct contact with external ambient air. The fluid to be cooled is indeed circulating in pipes, while the exchanger has a fin pack, often with copper pipes and aluminium fins but it’s also possibile to have stainless steel pipes and aluminium fins or both pipes and fins in carbon steel, depending on the kind of application and type of fluid to be cooled (water, water glicol, hydraulic oil, diathermic oil for example).

A dry cooler is in addition a quite economic solution, due to the fact that the only energy consumption is related to the fans ensuring the air flow.

A dry cooling solution has some limits, strictly related to the external ambient air employed to cool down the fluid. During the summer, the outlet temperature of the water can be indeed at maximum 5-10° C higher than the temperature of ambient air.

On the other hand, during the winter, when air temperature goes below 0° C, the risk is that the water inside the pipes can freeze, with severe damages to the plant with breakage of pipes. In this case there are two solutions: if the requirement of the process allows it, is it possibile to employ water glicol, preventing the freezing, otherwise the solution is represented by self draining dry coolers. In this kind of dry cooler the water inside the pipes is automatically and completely drained out of the exchanger, thanks to a sloped exchange pack and to a special pipe battery with valves for the complete discharge of the water.

At last, dry coolers have significantly increased their energy efficiency thanks to developments in the technology of fans, using EC motor fans that during the different seasons provide the proper adjustment of the functioning speed to the weather conditions and to the effective needs of the plant, reducing energy consumption at the minimum required.

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Dematerialization and green recovery in the farm

19/07/2019

Time for dematerialization in Tempco… in our path toward digitalization we’ve taken a step forward by eliminating all the documents stored in our archives for the past 12 years.

In the sign of saving and recovery, heat recovery and not only, we’ve looked for a green way to recycle the whole amount of paper that was coming out of the paper shredder. We finally found a farm, the Farm Besana, that takes care of animals with respiratory disease due to hay using paper strips as bedding.

The paper bedding is eco friendly, absorbent and doesn’t generate dust. It is the ideal solution for horses with respiratory issues, and a valid and economic alternative to de-dusted hay.

A nice example of circular economy, don’t you think?

The beautiful horse pictured here is called Egano 7 and is allergic to hay, so that it must be fed only with de-dusted e wet hay.

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