Efficiency Improvement of the Air Cooled Packaged Water Chiller Unit with Three-Phase Alternating Current Control Technology

Abstract

A three-phase alternating current control technology (TPACCT) was proposed and applied to the compressor of an air cooled packaged water chiller unit (ACH) to maintain the stable operation of the air-conditioning system and reduce energy consumption. The proposed TPACCT mainly uses a Single-Chip microcomputer to perform the calculations of the self-developed program, and uses a silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) component to trigger the voltage phase angle of ACH. Due to the drop of the controlled voltage, the current value is reduced, and the corresponding ACH active power also drops. This study attempts to reach the dynamic balance of voltage and current of the compressor in the air-conditioning system under heavy-load operating conditions to obtain the best control parameters. This study also conducted a long-term day-to-day experiment of the compressor, mainly analyzing the cumulative energy consumption of ACH when operating in a single zone, and comparing the energy-saving effect of the proposed TPACCT with the case operating under mains electricity. Results show that the cumulative energy consumption is about 5% lower than that of mains electricity mode. Different energy-saving strategies are provided for air-conditioning systems that need to be maintained under heavy-duty operation for a long time.