Niles, Ill.-based Thermal Care Inc. introduced a new industrial product to its Accuchiller line this year and had the entire brand of standard water‐cooled portable, packaged and central chillers certified by the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute.
The globally recognized AHRI certification program assures equipment will achieve the highest performance rating standards. Equipment is subject to rigorous annual evaluation from a third‐party laboratory to be certified.
"This is a huge step for Thermal Care," according to Bob Smith, the company's director of engineering. "We have worked diligently through the certification process to ensure our water‐cooled chillers consistently meet our published performance standards. In other words, we deliver as promised."
Customers will be able to do their own comparisons of Thermal Care water-cooled chillers to other products they have.
"This can be critical to a company as they develop energy efficiency strategies, without the need to purchase a larger chiller than necessary or to perform expensive independent testing," Smith said in a press release.
The company's new Accuchiller product is the KSE Series, which was designed to work in the harshest weather environments. Variable speed electronically commutated fans allow the chiller to withstand ambient conditions from ‐20° to 125° F.
"Although outdoor chillers have been around for a very long time, none have been purely focused on industrial applications, until the KSE," Peter Armbruster, Thermal Care sales and marketing director, said in an email.
The KSE chillers are controlled with a 7‐inch color touchscreen with communication options making it Internet of Things ready.
"The interest level in the KSE by our customers has been phenomenal with several orders being placed right at product release," Armbruster said, adding, "the activity level continues to increase."
The first order Thermal Care received in the plastics industry was for a custom injection molder with a focus on insert and filter molding, he added.
Armbruster said having onboard low- and high-pressure pumping options opens up opportunities not historically available to traditional outdoor air-cooled chillers, which are most commonly used for HVAC applications.
"The KSE chiller gives a wide range of plastics processors the option to move the chiller outside, saving valuable floor space while offering the flexible setpoint temperature ranges they require," Armbruster said. "Plus, the PLC [programmable logic controller] with remote monitoring allows them to have secure remote access."
The new KSE product line also comes with completely independent fluid and refrigeration circuits, Armbruster said.
"This redundancy is important to our customers in case an unexpected malfunction occurs in one cooling circuit, the other circuit can continue to run," Armbruster said. "Any component in that circuit can be isolated and serviced without shutting the entire unit down, minimizing production downtime."
Also, the process fluid circuit allows for a setpoint temperature range from 20° to 80° F and the chiller to operate in weather from -20° up to 125° F.
"Many competitors require custom designs or costly options to match these operating conditions, but Thermal Care offers them as standard," Armbruster said.