Home / Knowledge / Why air cooling matters more on site than on paper
Why air cooling matters more on site than on paper
A cooling water circuit is an installation, a freeze risk and a maintenance item that a substation does not want.
Water cooling looks efficient in a specification and becomes a liability in the field. It means a circuit to install, a supply to arrange, freeze protection in cold climates and another maintenance item on a machine that may run a few times a year.
For portable recovery work it is close to disqualifying: a set that needs water is not a set a crew can take to a substation and run in an outage window. Heat exchanger, compression cylinders and crankcase are therefore all air cooled.
The trade-off is real: air cooling limits continuous duty at high ambient temperature. That is why the duty point and the site ambient are both asked for rather than assumed, and why a standard model is proposed only where it genuinely fits.
Specifications
| Air cooled | Heat exchanger, compression cylinders and crankcase |
|---|---|
| Avoids | Water circuit, freeze protection and its maintenance |
| We ask for | Duty point and site ambient temperature |
Related Products
Why an SF6 compressor has to be oil-free
Oil carried into the gas contaminates a charge that is expensive, regulated and intended to be reused.
How to specify a gas compressor duty point
Gas, flow, suction pressure and discharge pressure together define the machine; any one of them alone does not.
What regulation means for practical SF6 handling
SF6 is a tracked substance in many markets, which makes recovery a compliance activity rather than a cost-saving one.
Send us your duty point
Tell us the gas, the flow you need and the suction and discharge pressures. If a standard model fits we will say so; if it does not, the compressor and control design are tailored to the duty.