Air conditioning chiller replacement for a movie theater in Eindhoven

The air conditioning chiller supporting the movie theatre building in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, was the original equipment that has reached the end of its service life. To address the recurring maintenance issues associated with air conditioning system, the building owner has decided to replace existing equipment, including the original chillers installed at the roof gantry, with a modern energy-efficient system.

The whole project had to be completed within ten weeks; this included the dismantling the existing chiller and pipework ancillaries of the original plant, as well as manufacturing, carrying out the installation, commissioning, and starting up of new equipment, and its integration into the building’s management system.

During preliminary discussions with the customer technicians, it became clear that the existing system was lightly loaded, and as such was inefficient when running with the screw compressors at a partial load condition. Kaltra engineers took this into consideration and offered an inverter-driven chiller which features outstanding energy efficiency at partial loads. At the same time, the nature of the Netherlands climate combined with the high cost of energy was a prerequisite for including a free cooling circuit into the new air conditioning system.

For the above reasons, the most appropriate solution was to design the cooling system based on an inverter-driven chiller with a free cooling system. Of the options proposed by Kaltra, the building owner preferred the most efficient chiller from the Lightstream Freecool lineup with a dual refrigerant circuit and inverter screw compressors running on R1234ze. This environmentally conscious, low carbon footprint chiller offers the ultimate saving in energy and running costs.

The dismantling of the original chiller, reassembling of the primary water circuit, and installation of Lightstream Freecool has been completed in 4 weeks. The upgraded air conditioning facility was put into operation in July 2018 and commissioned in August. The investment made is paying off, with substantial operating cost savings expected in coming months when the chiller plant starts free cooling operation. The chilled water system provides a stable chilled water temperature of 7°C±0.5°C in ambients of up to 36°C (maximum temperature observed in the area) and feeds all the air conditioning appliances in the building.