Industrial Styrene Chiller

2014-01-29

Because Smart Family does a lot of custom projects, we run into many specialty applications. This particular project was an interesting one. It involved cooling a styrene process in a petrochemical plant.

As you may know, styrene is a difficult fluid to handle. It is a highly combustible fluid that is also toxic to your lungs and a carcinogenic. In other words, prolonged exposure to styrene is quite dangerous to your health. During design, we decided to incorporate a secondary heat exchanger between the process and our chiller as added protection. For this particular application, we are maintaining a storage tank at 45-47 degrees fahrenheit. It is a Gulf Coast installation, so corrosion resistance was important.

At its heart, this chiller features two independent scroll compressors, one per circuit. We prefer to avoid tandem scroll compressors wherever possible as they can present service issues down the road, especially in industrial applications. Additional unit features include: suction accumulators, a shell & tube evaporator, air cooled condenser with hydrophilic coated, non-lanced condenser fins, SmartAdvance2 Microprocessor controller, phase monitor with over/under voltage relay, and compressor circuit breakers. All components are mounted on a galvanized structural steel base frame. Upon completion, the chiller assembly is primed and then painted with a 1000hr salt spray industrial enamel to help protect it from the harsh coastal elements.

For more information on our Industrial Scroll Chillers, please visit our product page: Scroll Chillers

We will have some more unit videos and blog posts in the coming weeks. We hope you enjoy them. Thanks for reading.