Italian OEM Enex recently unveiled its next-generation Yukon Gravity family of CO2 chillers designed for the commercial HVAC and process-cooling industries.
Using CO2 refrigerant allows the chiller to work with extremely low temperature differences between evaporation and fluid, optimizing efficiency, explained Sergio Girotto, Enex’s President.
Enex has been working on the development and optimization of CO2 chillers for many years. Since 2015, the company has installed many such systems – both for HVAC applications and for process cooling. “Over the years, we have demonstrated a total degree of reliability, which confirms the validity of this new project,” said Girotto about the Gravity range.
Enex has particularly been focusing on CO2 for this new range as current HFC refrigerant blends are subject to the limitations of the EU F-Gas Regulation, explained Girotto. In addition, “Yukon Gravity chillers ensure a durable investment, respecting the efficiency requirements established by the Ecodesign Directive,” he said.
The product is called Yukon “Gravity” to highlight the innovative gravity method of operation for the evaporator. With this method, the evaporator is completely fed with liquid until saturated, so the heat transfer is very high and consequently the temperature delta is very low. The chiller comes complete with special built-in functions to exploit these possibilities.
Other advantages of using CO2, said Enex, include: there is no risk of water freezing even at temperatures close to 0°C; and their is no risk of aspiration of liquid from the compressors.
The Yukon Gravity range of CO2 chillers offers capacities ranging between 50kW to 600kW (14.2TR to 170.6TR) for cooling water from 12°C to 7°C (53.6°F to 44.6°F). However, different capacity units can cool water or brine down to as low as -15°C (5°F), said Girotto.
Options for Yukon chillers
The continuous search for improvement has also allowed Enex to introduce options for the Yukon series:
- The Yukon “R” reversible chiller, which can work as a heat pump in winter.
- Yukon with heat recovery for sanitary water, designed for end users with high consumption of hot water, such as hotels and wellness centers.
- Yukon with an ejector with an exclusive circuit (patent pending) for greater efficiency.
