What is a chiller operating map?
An operating map of an air-cooled chiller is evaporator and condenser temperature boundaries within which chiller is capable of operating. In other words, it shows the relationship between the leaving chilled water temperature range and the ambient temperature range.

Why is it important that a chiller has a broad or wide operating map?
Having a broad operating map means that the chiller can produce a wide range of leaving water temperatures in a wide range of ambient temperatures. A broad chiller operating map clearly gives application flexibility. Being able to benefit from a wide range of chilled leaving water temperatures means that chiller will be suited to more comfort and process cooling applications.

Whereas having a wide ambient temperature range enables the chiller to perform reliably and optimally in more geographical regions including cold and hot climates.
Now that extreme temperatures are increasingly frequent at the peaks of our seasons, customers can be confident that they are safeguarded against reliability issues.

A broad operating map also enables chiller to be operated outside its nominal “design conditions”. In fact, most chillers only operate at their nominal design conditions a small percentage of the time. This is normal, because there are constant fluctuations that a chiller system needs to continuously adapt to, such as changing outdoor air temperature, humidity, water flow, temperature set point etc.

Many technology choices are made during product research and development to achieve the broadest operating maps possible, or in other words, to stretch them in every direction, and ultimately to give more flexibility to consultants, designers and building owners.

What are the operating maps of Trane’s Sintesis™ GVAF air-cooled chiller and what benefits do they bring?
Trane Sintesis GVAF air-cooled chillers offer unrivalled application flexibility by the widest air- and water-side operating maps in comfort cooling and high-temperature process cooling applications.
GVAF works reliably in ambient temperatures ranging from -20°C all the way up to 46°C in full load conditions and 50°C in partial load conditions. When combining this with the extensive water side operating map, chilled water between +5°C to +26°C, this makes GVAF chillers ideal fit for both comfort and high-temperature process cooling applications like data centers. Customers benefit from:
• Maximum uptime
• Maximum reliability
• Highest possible performance at any operating conditions

How does Trane achieve such wide operating maps for Sintesis Excellent GVAF?
The best chillers on the market are not just a combination of new compressors and heat exchangers. Reaching the best chiller performances requires continuous chiller platform innovations from a component, system design and controls point of view – and this is how Trane makes the difference. Some of the latest innovations which have enabled GVAF chillers to reach the market leading air-cooled chiller operating maps include:
• GVAF chillers feature a patent-pending CORE (Compressor Operating-map Range Extender) condenser technology which enables chillers stable operation, start and stop across the operating map.
• When stretching the operating map limits, the chiller control plays an important role. Trane’s Symbio™ 800 controller is the market’s fastest adaptive controller, combining the global experience of all installed and maintained Trane chillers, with built-in flexibility for local adaptation to special controls requirements when needed.
• GVAF chillers are equipped with special high saturated suction temperature maglev compressors when the leaving chilled water is higher than 14°C. This particularly suits the demanding requirements of data center applications.

Learn more about the application flexibility of Sintesis™ Excellent GVAF