EESIFLO has been supplying clamp on flowmeters to chiller manufacturers, consultants and end users . This has been in portable and fixed versions. Normally the media to be measured is water at different temperatures in pipes ranging from 3 inches to 12 inches in the HVAC industry.

A consultant recently approached EESIFLO’s rental service for portable time of flight or transit time clamp on meters. This was because the consultant company’s speciality was enhancing chiller efficiency. The consultant company had a special chemical cleaning method to clean the insides of chiller tubes used in the cooling process. It was the consultant’s responsibility to prove to their client that this cleaning process actually improved the energy efficiency of the chiller. Normally they would simply measure the power consumption of the chiller using a Fluke electrical meter before and after cleaning to see the load that was taken by the chiller but this particular client wanted more proof of actual chiller performance in KW/HR consumption.

It was important for the client to know the temperature of the water at the chiller inlet and outlet and the volumetric flow rate through the chiller before and after the cleaning service had been performed. This way, it was possible to ascertain whether or not the cleaning had actually improved the energy efficiency of the chiller in KW/HR

EESIFLO’s portable 6000 energy meter armed with clamp on transit time flow sensors, clamp on inlet and outlet temperature probes was put to the test. There was some argument as to the validity of using clamp on temperature devices due to the fact that the temperature on the surface of the pipes did not represent the actual internal temperature of the liquid so a test was conducted against inline temperature and clamp on temperature probes to confirm the plausibility of this kind of measurement. It became immediately evident that the temperatures inside the pipes (using insert RTD’s) were slightly different from the clamp on sensor measurements but it was also very evident that the DELTA T or differential temperatures were the same. Measuring the differential temperature across the consumer accurately was of utmost importance. Both T1 and T2 sensors were insulated with glass wool material to nullify the affects of the atmospheric temperature on the parts of the sensors that were not in contact with the pipe.

The internal datalogger stored KW/HR or Heat Flow values before and after the cleaning process. The client was able to show energy savings with this data of more than 10% which made the clients very willing to pay them in full for the optimization that they had promised.

Contact your nearest EESIFLO representative for more information on non-invasive energy measurement systems whether for rental or purchase or log onto our website www.eesiflo.com