There are many factors to consider when designing a cooling solution for any application. One that is often of critical importance is environment. It is typically hot or cold where the unit is to be operated? High or low altitude? Is it a caustic or dirty environment? Or in the case of this job for a mobile military radar cooling application – is the environment land or sea based?
Our customer required cooling for a radar application on board a US naval military vessel. While we have extensive experience designing cooling solutions for all types of land based applications, radar in particular, designing a chiller to be used at sea and exposed to the harsh ocean environment is unique.
We designed this chiller to withstand the constant salt spray from the ocean by constructing the unit with all stainless steel cabinetry and supports. Furthermore we housed the electronic controls in a weatherproof enclosure, conformally coated the electrical board inside of the weatherproof enclosure and heresite coated the condenser and the condenser fins. We also incorporated a set of heavy duty vibration isolators and a reinforced frame to increase the stability of the chiller. Finally we included a tank in this 3 ton unit to make for a completely closed circuit between the chiller and the radar equipment being cooled.
We are confident that this mobile military chiller will hold up to the ocean environment as well as a standard chiller will hold up on any land based environment.