Blue Flame Technologies unveils Broad non-electric chillers for AC systems

Blue Flame Technologies (Pvt) Limited was recently appointed the exclusive distributor of BROAD non-electric chillers for air conditioning systems in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

From left: Director Business Development Richard Bahar, Managing Director Z.M. Hairu, International Sales Manager – South East Asia for Broad AC Jimmy Chen, Director PR and Sales Derrick Karunaratne and Manager Renewable Energy and Special Projects Upendra Walpola – Pic by Upul Abayasekara

Blue Flame Technologies officially launched Broad’s complete line of non-electric air conditioners for the Sri Lanka and Maldives market. Broad, the premier non-electric air conditioner chiller manufacturer in the world currently sells its equipment ranging from small residential models to large institutional and district cooling applications, in over 70 countries. It is also the market leader in Europe, Australia and the US.

Air conditioning being considered a luxury is about to be a thing of the past; increasingly it has been tied to worker productivity in offices and factories as well as a basic prerequisite in hotels, stores, malls and public facilities such as airports, sports complexes, etc. Thus it is now considered a basic necessity in tropical countries such as Sri Lanka.

From an individual business’ standpoint, air conditioning costs can run as high as 60 to 70 per cent of total energy costs, which continue to rise and impact their bottom line negatively. One of Blue Flame Technologies’ goals is to help Sri Lankan businesses to reduce their consumption of grid electricity and the costs associated with it. In so doing, it helps the country use that electricity for more productive purposes, directly associated with economic growth.

Based in Changsha, China, Broad has gained worldwide recognition both in terms of market acceptance and endorsements from the scientific community, for its environmentally friendly and cost effective air conditioning systems that run on the simple principle of “absorption cooling”. Just to illustrate an international example; all of the air conditioning needed at the World Expo Shanghai 2010 was provided by Broad, to cool an area in excess of two million square meters.

Blue Flame Technologies Chair-man Sanjeewa Wickremanayake explained: “Absor-ption Cooling sounds complicated, but it is really very simple. In the old days, some of us who lived in places that did not have grid electricity used kerosene refrigerators. The fridges used to keep things cool by way of a kerosene-fuelled flame and heat. The same principle that was used in the kerosene refrigerator forms the basic working principle of Broad chillers – although they provide much more efficient and much larger cooling performances to meet industry needs.”

Company Managing Director Z.M. Hairu, an Engineer by profession added: “Absorption chillers also known as non-electric chillers have some distinct advantages over conventional air conditioning and chiller systems. Firstly, they can use low grade thermal energy; secondly, there are very few moving parts in the equipment and therefore the reliability is much higher; third, they can use multiple energy sources, such as waste heat from generators; steam from hot water boilers; heat from burning biomass or municipal waste – or from solar energy captured in a solar hot water collector; the chillers can also be direct-fired with natural gas, diesel or furnace oil; fourth, when waste heat is used, the impact of using absorption chiller technology is much, much more environment-friendly, as very little or no fossil fuel is used to produce the required amount of cooling.”

The savings from use of absorption chiller technology can be significant. In Sri Lanka, the cost of air conditioning a typical hotel runs up to 50-60% of total electricity costs.

In the Maldives, most resorts generate their own electricity via diesel generators, which result in considerably higher air conditioning costs. But the waste heat produced by the generators can be used to “fire” the air conditioning system for these hotels, resulting in a net decrease in cost for air conditioning and energy consumed.

In the case of Sri Lanka, most hotels and hospitals utilise oil-fired boilers for hot water and steam that can be used to power Broad’s absorption chillers, resulting in significant savings in electricity costs – and a reduction in carbon emissions. Where boilers are not being used, Broad’s Direct-Fired Absorption (DFA) Chillers can utilise lower cost diesel or furnace oil to directly produce cool air and hot water/steam, thereby further increasing the efficiency of the system and reducing electricity costs. Additionally, hot water produced by solar panels (collectors) can be used to power Broad air conditioners. Biomass can also be burnt to make hot water and steam, to run the Broad chillers.

The payback period is typically around three years (or less), depending on the size of hotel/facility, average occupancy rates and electricity rates (the higher these three factors, the shorter the payback period).

Where buildings are clustered together, the concept of “district cooling” can be applied, enabling even greater efficiencies and economies of scale. Larger chillers or several in tandem can be connected to a looped pipeline two kilometres (or even further), supplying chilled water to each building. Buildings or even units within each building can be assessed charges based only on their usage of cold water. (The temperature going in, the flow-rate and the temperature coming out determines the amount of “cool” utilised by each “metered” unit).

Examples of District Cooling include: the Forum, Barcelona; DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon, India (120 million square foot development); Fort Bragg, USA; Goteborg CBD, Sweden; Central Business District of Austin, Texas, USA (In 2004 BROAD’s three U.S. projects – including Austin – were the largest of seven demonstration projects sponsored by the US Dept of Energy, under President George W. Bush’s National Energy Policy Directives. Furthermore, the project in Austin represents the single largest “green” project undertaking in the US to date).