Water cooled Chillers Vs Air cooled Chillers

There are many aspects to consider while choosing what chiller would be best for a building and its cooling system. However my preference for water-cooled chillers over air-cooled is due to:
1.Higher Efficiency
Air-cooled chillers have a full load Kw/ton of approx 1.25 while water-cooled chillers have a full load Kw/ton of between 0.55 and 0.8 .Lower Kw/ton indicates higher efficiency.
2.Lower operating costs
Water-cooled chillers have an improved thermodynamic effectiveness as compared to air-cooled chillers. This is due to the heat rejection at or near the air's WBT rather than the higher DBT and thus water-cooled chillers can take the advantage of lower condensing temperatues than air-cooled chillers.

Dont agree with your last point. Even after accounting for the KW draw of the cooling tower fans and condenser water pumps, water-cooled chillers normally have an efficiency advantage over air-cooled. since air-cooled chillers have a full load KW/ton higher than that of a water-cooled chiller. Higher Kw/ton means lower efficiency.

I will not support any chillers (air/water), it totally depends on the designer & client requirement i.e. Client's budget, aim of investment etc & designers heat load value, if cooling load required higher than 325-350TR than he has to think for the water cooled as manufacturer like Carrier have only max upto 325-350TR in air cooled chiller. consider one example if client requirement is to make shopping mall & it's requirement is 500 TR & he will be the end user than i will prefer to go with water cooled ,if he will sale to the end user & all maintenance by the end user then i will go for air cooled chiller, it will give more profit to my client.also, it depends on the client what he want actually money or his reputation in market, so there is a lot of thing decide to choose the system.

But as per technical, one should prefer to go with water cooled chiller for the 500TR or higher requirement of the system. if less than 350 TR better to go with air cooled chillers.

For bigger capacity of HVAC load , i feel Water Cooled chillers are always benificial from energy saving point of view . Initial investment will be higher but ROI will be @ 7-8 years of operation of plant. For the plants upto 300 TR of total load , air cooled chillers are prefered.

I, agree with Mr Ashok and Mr,Bundi,but still my view is that of the worst case the water chillers have the edge.

Factors favouring water cooled chillers:

• For heavy to medium loads.
• Greater efficiency. Though air cooled chillers are available with matching efficiency but they need huge space and large amount of heat is generated.

With what ever disadvantages  Water cooled  chiller systems have, I am for it as it delivers the required temperature at the user end.

Now I would throw the discussion to the respectable forum to air their arguements.