How varying condenser coolant flow rate affects chiller performance: thermodynamic modeling and experimental confirmation

Although most commercial chillers are designed and installed to operate at constant coolant flow rates, one can alter the power consumption of their compressors by modifying the design to incorporate variable coolant flow rates. The issue addressed here is how to model that explicit flow-rate dependence within an analytic chiller model. We expand our earlier thermodynamic model to explicitly account for the influence of condenser coolant flow rate, and validate model predictions against an extensive set of experimental measurements from a large commercial centrifugal chiller.