Cooling Water and Refrigeration Systems - Summary

Rejection of waste heat is a feature of most chemical processes. Once the opportunities for recovery of heat to other process streams and to the utilities system (e.g. steam generation) have been exhausted, then waste heat must be rejected to the environment. The most direct way to reject heat to the environment above ambient temperature is by 

Situations are often encountered when cooling water networks need to increase the heat load of individual coolers, which requires investment in new cooling tower capacity. Such situations demand a more complete analysis of the whole cooling water system. 

Refrigeration is required to produce cooling below ambient temperature. There are two broad classes of 

Refrigeration cycles offer many opportunities for heat integration with the process. These can be explored using the grand composite curve. 

Absorption refrigeration is much less common than compression refrigeration. Absorption refrigeration powers by compressing the refrigerant fluid dissolved in a solvent using a pump. 

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