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As a leading manufacturer of air conditioning equipment for residential, commercial, and industrial fields, Daikin is committed to ensuring a service that aims to meet specific project and customer requirements. This type of service complies with project specifications, which are defined to perform with critical applications or large and important projects where reliability testing is necessarily required.
To allow customers to be 100 per cent sure about the products they have chosen for a specific project, Daikin Applied Europe offers the opportunity to participate in the witness tests – test sessions in dedicated facilities where Applied products can be tested to reproduce the field conditions, they will have to operate in. These tests aim to provide customers with the ultimate proof of the ability of the units selected to meet project requirements. Factory acceptance testing is a service supplied by Daikin that involves a series of tests to ensure that the unit meets the specified requirements, design criteria, and functionality before it is delivered to the customer.
Especially for big HVAC projects, the witness test is often an important or even mandatory step, necessary to certify that the chillers that will be installed can satisfy project requirements at specific ambient temperatures.
Of course, to offer a witness test service, specific knowledge and dedicated facilities are needed.
Air-cooled chillers, heat pumps and polyvalent units
Daikin Applied Europe’s chiller factory disposes of certified testing facilities, including a total witness test dedicated climatic chamber.
This facility tests chillers across a wide range of operational modes in all climate conditions with internationally recognized standards.
The test facility layout consists of two test laboratories or climatic chambers, completely independent of each other. Based on the test needs and size of the machines, the two test chambers can be joined together, allowing the test of a great variety of units, up to 2000 kW nominal cooling capacity. Besides allowing tests of chillers of any size, the chamber allows tests with glycol and is designed to operate equally at 60Hz and 50 Hz, simulating winter seasons down to minus 15°C or Middle East hot temperatures up to 52°C. Thanks to this facility, Daikin allows customers, consultants, and installers to have chillers’ performance and functionalities checked for project compliance, under full load and part load conditions altogether.
The climatic chamber at Daikin Applied Europe is operated following a rigorous set of procedures to ensure compliance with international standards set by certification bodies such as AHRI and Eurovent.
The range of tests that can be performed in the climatic chamber is extensive, including:
- High ambient temperature installations: up to +52 °C
- Extremely low ambient temperature: down to -15 °C
- Heat recovery and heat pump tests
- 4-6 pipe units
- Acoustic tests
- Voltage range: from 380 V to 690 V
- Frequency range: 50 Hz – 60Hz
- Upon request, negative evaporator leaving water temperature conditions
The facility enables comprehensive testing of the entire range of air-cooled chillers under any design condition. Additionally, it allows for the simulation of various applications, ranging from comfort cooling conditions in residential, office, and commercial buildings, to highly customized chillers for industrial process cooling applications such as food, pharmaceuticals, refrigerated warehouses, and data centres. The facility also features advanced testing technology for water-cooled units.
With the use of advanced technologies, the climatic chamber provides the highest standard of factory witness testing for chillers and heat pumps.
Water-cooled chillers and heat pumps
When it comes to testing water-powered units, the activity is done in an appropriate facility, which is suitable for projects for machines with special voltages. This test bench is AHRI-certified, which means that it disposes of all the equipment useful to meet the requirements for certification.
Daikin Applied Europe also offers the possibility of testing water-cooled chillers capable of a cooling capacity of up to 11.5 MW with the latest and advanced test technology. In particular, we are referring to test bench 4, which is the largest test bench in terms of cooling capacity, as well as being AHRI-approved.
The testing facilities are verified and accredited to EN 14511:2013, ISO 9614:2009, and other major European and American HVACR industry standards. Furthermore, the climatic chamber is certified by the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI). It is also approved by Eurovent hence tests on air-cooled units for the Eurovent testing campaign are being conducted in this new Daikin facility to ensure the effectiveness of the tests performed.
Test for every application
It is important to point out that, the various tests that are carried out within the Daikin facilities, concern units that will be installed in different types of applications: from Data Centres, and multi-purpose units, to applications that are in a very high ambient temperature condition. The tests applied can cover the operating conditions of different applications and under different ranges. The machines are monitored at several points to verify their correct operation, starting from nominal condition down to minimum load. All this is implemented to ensure that the units meet all customer requirements in terms of performance under all possible conditions without low- or high-pressure alarms, to guarantee maximum machine efficiency.
As already mentioned, Daikin can meet a wide variety of testing needs. For applications that are in high ambient temperature conditions, witness tests are often required due to the extreme climatic conditions of their outdoor environment. Daikin chillers for high-temperature applications can ensure maximum efficiency even at temperatures as high as 52 °C Therefore, the testing facilities at Daikin Applied Europe need to allow tests at high temperatures, recreating ambient conditions that allow measuring performance even at extreme temperatures, powering chillers at the same frequency required in the project (often 60Hz for the Middle East). In other types of applications, for example, multi-purpose units, heat pumps or polyvalent units can perfectly match their requirements, because of providing heating and cooling at the same time, and Daikin facilities can also accommodate this type of test. This requires the Climatic Chamber to be able to test at temperatures that can range from very low ambient conditions (minus 5 °C) to extremely high temperatures. In addition to operating conditions, other parameters are often measured, including the heat pump's defrost conditions and unit performance at partial loads to verify how chillers respond to load variation.
You can find here a related project about the Data Center.
You can find here a related project about multi-purpose units.
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