The purpose of an HVAC system is not just to provide a building with the required comfort levels. HVAC systems are also used as part of manufacturing processes in industrial plants, petrochemical or pharmaceutical laboratories, IT cooling and food and beverage manufacturing, and many other facilities – providing industrial facilities with the necessary cooling, heating, ventilation, or humidity control, with great precision.
HVAC systems are vital for certain facilities where strict temperature and humidity control is essential to ensure the quality of a product, safety, or simply the reliability of equipment.
As a global market leader in the Air Conditioning sector, Daikin is experienced in the exacting requirements of process application projects. Daikin products are preferred for their advanced technology, reliability, and outstanding energy efficiency:
Choosing the right technology to meet the needs of the facility
Process applications need extremely reliable HVAC units to provide the required cooling, heating, or ventilation with great precision that perfectly meets the needs of the process.
So, whether the HVAC system is required to provide cooling, heating, or ventilation only, it needs to be properly sized, offering the cooling and/or heating capacity, plus the airflow range that makes sense for the size of the facility and the demand of the process equipment. Finally, HVAC systems must incorporate units that can ensure high energy efficiency, as running costs are an important consideration for any business.
Daikin Single Screw Inverter technology ensures high efficiencies in chillers and heat pumps at both full and partial loads. Inverter technology is particularly suitable for applications where precise temperature control is needed. In fact, an inverter is a key Chiller component to adapt performance to temperature demand, thus ensuring maximum efficiency.
Indoor Air Quality
Process applications are often not just reliant on cooling or heating. They may also require air filtration systems able to address indoor air quality issues, often generated by industrial processes – in the case of oil & gas industrial plants, for instance.
That kind of facility can be a very harsh environment for workers, and it may be necessary to take action to provide a safe environment for plant personnel. High-quality air filtration can avoid safety risks for workers. This is achieved by choosing an air handling unit featuring the highest filtration levels and the optimum air-exchange rate for the size of the indoor environment.
Load variation
Load variation is a very relevant topic for any process application. Some applications might require the HVAC system to deal with varying workloads. That can be the case for data centres, where HVAC systems, to operate as efficiently as possible, might be required to match the load variation of the servers during different times of the day.
Other process applications needing cooling or heating for industrial or medical equipment, might require constant loads during the year. That does not mean the chiller will operate in the same conditions throughout the whole year, though. In fact, to ensure that the load request in a food process application – for instance – is always satisfied, the chiller is designed to provide the proper cooling capacity in the most demanding operating conditions for that specific climate region (design conditions). But while the load request is constant during the year, the ambient temperature may not be constant.
So, the chiller will have to be able to provide the required capacity at design conditions, but for most of the year will operate at different (more favourable) outdoor ambient temperature conditions. This will require the chiller to operate at part load for most of the time. That is exactly where inverter technology excels.
Click here to find out more about the benefits of using Daikin inverter technology
Reliability
Reliability of the HVAC system is almost always a vital aspect that should be considered for process applications, as breakdowns and downtime will inevitably affect the productivity of an industrial plant or data centre, and even more impactful for a hospital for example.
HVAC systems designed for process applications have an important role as they serve facilities and businesses that need to make sure their product, service, or activity, is up to the standards that markets and legislations demand. For this reason, it is important to choose technology that stands out for proven reliability.
Monitoring
Monitoring a unit’s performance is necessary to guarantee the best performance and reliability of the HVAC system. It helps to reduce costs and make the whole system energy efficient and reliable. In fact, monitoring allows the implementation of energy-efficient strategies based on the observation of real data and allows the planning of preventive maintenance.
To prevent breakdowns and maintenance issues Daikin can provide customers with a remote monitoring system such as Daikin on Site.
Daikin on Site is a unique solution for active remote monitoring and smart maintenance, successfully used worldwide to support customers during the entire product lifecycle. It ensures the complete remote operation of any unit. It is fully compatible with all Daikin Applied UK products, and it can integrate third-party products like IoT devices (i.e. IAQ sensors).
The use of Daikin on Site is normally included in maintenance packages for the customer’s peace of mind. It is a tool for predictive maintenance, which is key for many process applications, especially the pharmaceutical sector, as downtimes or issues with storage cooling systems can negatively impact the product.
To top that off, Daikin on Site also allows the creation of periodical reports of the system performance or energy audits, which helps to keep the system as efficient as possible.
Would you be interested in visiting the Daikin factories where all the mentioned technologies are designed and manufactured? Then, get in touch here.