Market for chiller services comes of age January 2021

But equipment users in the region need no longer be at the mercy of the local agents, paying high prices for service engineers who are not certified to service and repair chillers to factory specifications, thanks to USC’s recently-launched venture in association with Coil Tech of Bahrain: the only chiller service company in the Gulf that is industry as well as factory-certified on Carrier, Trane, York and McQuay liquid chillers.

Just the facts

USC was recently asked by a shopping centre in Bahrain to inspect and overhaul a 500-tonne machine that had been under a maintenance contract to the local service agent for over 10 years.

USC found that all the bearings were worn as well as the high-speed shaft had been damaged.

Upon further inspection, it was found that the condenser tubes were completely coated with scale. The scale had caused this machine to operate at higher-than-design condensing temperatures, causing the chiller to enter a prolonged surge condition, which in turn caused the high-speed shaft damage as well as the bearing damage. Any qualified service company should have been able to detect this condition long before any of this costly damage would have occurred, but USC was able to diagnose, repair and correct this situation for the customer.

In another instance, USC was asked to overhaul four air-cooled centrifugal chillers for a facility in Bahrain. USC also performed an oil analysis of the chillers which revealed that all of them had well over the acceptable limit of metal-wear particulates in their oil. USC subsequently discovered after removing the entire refrigerant charge from all the chillers that there was a shortfall of at least 500 pounds of refrigerant.

After completely dismantling the centrifugal compressors, USC discovered that they all had excessive bearing wear. Each of these chillers has four bearings in the compressor and motor section and all of them were in very poor condition. Ironically, the service agents had submitted a report to the owners of the complex stating that all the chillers were in excellent condition and all refrigerant charges were short, but by nothing more than trace amounts. If these chillers had not been taken out of service when they were, and USC allowed to make the proper repairs, all of them would have surely suffered costly high-speed shaft and impeller damage. The shortage of refrigerants had caused the compressor discharge temperatures to rise greatly, thus directly affecting the machine performance and accelerating bearing wear. Again, the manufacturer’s agents did not have the experience or training to detect these mechanical problems.

More facts

USC has just been awarded a chiller retrofit project for a prestigious hotel chain that has 144 locations throughout the Middle East and Africa. The project, which took eight months of engineering and negotiations to secure, is a pilot one which involves the complete overhaul, retrofit and modernisation of the centrifugal chillers. The manufacturer had recommended that the hotel chain purchase new screw chillers, but USC undertook a survey and determined it more cost-effective to retrofit and modernise the existing chillers, rather than replace them. After the hotel’s regional engineering staff reviewed USC’s recommendation, it was agreed to award USC the contract, based on the engineering and cost-effectiveness of its proposal.

USC works for the equipment user, and not the manufacturer. If this hotel chain had been unwilling to explore its options it would have followed the traditional way of doing business in the Gulf, allowing the chiller manufacturer to sell it costly equipment without exploring what was in its best interests and thereby wasting thousands of dollars on new equipment that was totally unnecessary.

The reliance on the chiller manufacturers’ service agents and representatives is over. Untrained and uncertified service engineers are a thing of the past, now that USC has opened offices in the Middle East and Gulf.

Users of Carrier, Trane, York or McQuay chillers who want factory-certified service engineers who were trained by the factory direct in the US, will only find them at USC.

Users who want service engineers with at least 20 years field experience as chiller specialists, will find them at only at USC.

And users who want guarantees on service that last for one year or more, not the standard 30 to 90 days the agents offer, will only find this at USC.

The reason USC guarantees all its services for one year, is that it has specialists that do the job right the first time, with the experience, training, and certification to back its work.

USC has American service engineers who are certified to service and repair Carrier, Trane, York, and McQuay centrifugal and screw chillers. Agents are not certified in the repair of large tonnage chillers. The only certified organisation in the Middle East and Gulf that is factory-certified in the repair and service of centrifugal and screw chillers is USC Bahrain.

USC also has a technical training division located in Bahrain that is available to provide both classroom and hands-on training in the proper operation, maintenance and repair of Carrier, Trane York, and McQuay centrifugal and screw chillers.