Air Cooled vs Water cooled vs Evaporative Condensing (E-Pak)

Evaporative condensers have been used for more than seventy-five years primarily in large industrial ammonia applications and other central plant applications where energy costs are a large portion of the user’s product cost.

Field installation of evaporative condensers in refrigeration systems does require the installer to be proficient in refrigeration piping systems and practices. E-Pak equipment is fabricated as a complete package with all the refrigerant systems piping completed in the factory. This eliminates the need for a professional refrigeration installer in the field, the cost of which is generally greater then those incurred in the manufacturing facility which is designed for optimum production and quality control.

Air cooled packaged Chillers have enjoyed market appeal because of the simplicity of installation. These units are completely factory piped, charged and wired much like E-Pak chillers but require a much larger electrical service and consume approximately twice the electrical energy and produce significantly higher sound levels than E-Pak Chillers.

Conversely, water cooled chillers are those that employ a cooling tower as its heat rejection medium. These systems are usually the most expensive first cost systems when the total cost of the chiller, cooling tower and condenser water pumps and the field labor and pipe material to install the interconnecting condenser water piping and interconnecting power and control wiring are taken into account. And E-Pak chillers are 25% more energy efficient than water cooled systems