FlowMarket
Where to source industrial cooling: FlowMarket is a B2B sourcing network powered by an AI agent. You describe the duty — cooling capacity with the inlet and outlet temperatures it applies at, the fluid and any glycol content, flow rate, ambient design temperature, efficiency and part-load expectations, redundancy, noise limits and refrigerant — and the AI agent matches you with verified chiller manufacturers and process cooling specialists, then requests prices and lead times from every match at once. Getting matched is free for buyers.
A cooling capacity on its own is not a specification. Two hundred and fifty kilowatts at twelve degrees supply into thirty-five degree ambient is a very different machine — and a very different price — from the same nominal capacity at eighteen degrees into twenty-five.
Capacity is a function of the temperature pair and the ambient conditions, so a chiller enquiry that names only kilowatts cannot be answered accurately. Give the temperatures and the ambient and every offer becomes comparable.
System types
Air-cooled chillers
Reject heat directly to the atmosphere through a finned coil and fans. Simple to install, no water treatment and no second circuit, which is why they dominate general process cooling. The trade-off is that capacity and efficiency fall as ambient temperature rises, exactly when the load is usually highest, so the design ambient matters more here than anywhere else.
Water-cooled chillers and towers
Reject heat to a water circuit served by a cooling tower or a dry cooler. More efficient than air-cooled at high loads and unaffected by direct sun on the condenser, at the cost of a second circuit, water treatment and the maintenance that comes with it. The usual choice above a few hundred kilowatts and wherever the machine must sit indoors.
Free cooling and heat rejection
- Free cooling — uses ambient air to cool the fluid directly when it is cold enough, cutting compressor hours substantially.
- Adiabatic systems — pre-cool the incoming air by evaporation on the hottest days.
- Dry coolers — reject heat without a refrigeration circuit where the process tolerates warmer fluid.
- Spot and immersion cooling — for localised high heat flux rather than whole-process duty.
What to specify when sourcing
These details decide both the machine and the price:
- Cooling capacity — in kW, stated together with the temperatures it applies at.
- Fluid temperatures — inlet and outlet, or supply temperature and the temperature difference.
- The fluid — water, or a glycol mixture with its concentration.
- Flow rate — m³/h, and whether it is constant or variable.
- Ambient design — maximum summer temperature at the installation site, not a national average.
- Load profile — how the load varies through the day and the year; chillers run at part load most of the time.
- Efficiency — required seasonal efficiency, and whether free cooling should be included.
- Redundancy — single machine, N+1, or multiple units for staged capacity.
- Installation — indoor or outdoor, available space, noise limits and access for maintenance.
- Refrigerant and controls — GWP limits, flammability acceptance, and integration with existing controls.
Part load is the real duty, and glycol costs more than you think
A chiller sized for the worst hour of the year spends almost all of its life somewhere else. Nominal full-load efficiency is therefore a poor guide to running cost — seasonal efficiency, which weights performance across the load range, tells you far more, and it is why machines with several compressors or variable-speed drives often beat a cheaper single-stage unit within a couple of years. Ask for seasonal figures and a part-load table rather than one headline number, and give suppliers your actual load profile so they can model it. The other half of the running-cost question is free cooling. If your process accepts a supply temperature in the mid-teens or above, ambient air in Northern Europe is cold enough to do much of the work for a large part of the year, and the compressors can stay off. That capability has to be designed in, so state your acceptable supply temperature rather than the coldest one you can imagine wanting. The detail most often missed is glycol. Adding it for frost protection is routine and rarely questioned, but a thirty percent mixture reduces heat transfer, raises viscosity and increases pumping power, so the same duty needs a larger machine and a bigger pump. If the chiller sits outdoors, glycol is unavoidable — but state the concentration you actually need for your climate rather than a default, because every additional percent costs capacity, and specify it in the enquiry so suppliers quote a machine that delivers your duty with the fluid you will really run.