Air cooler broken

[Rio69]

Hi,
I have interesting situation.
We have installed air cooler of Hans Guentner company , and after few days of operation, customer reported cooler break-down.
After inspection, we have tried to claim from manufacturer warranty, in order to get the new cooler for replacement.
We have got the answer that the cooler was broken because of freezing from inside.
I have reminded them that cooling medium is 30% mixture of ethylene glycol and water, and in the room is +8degC, so there is no way to freeze it from outside.
The glycol is cooled by ammonia at -8deC, by plate heat exchanger, and glycol temperature is -5/-1degC, so if glycol is frozen, it will be in plate heat exchanger.
In the same cooling system, there is 15 air cooler, working fine.
Anyway, they said that according to pictures, it must be destroyed by frozen medium inside the cooler, and believe it or not, that warranty can not be accepted, and that we are free to order new cooler...

Please see pictures enclosed, and please tell me that I am not crazy....

Rio

[Yuri B.]

Hello Rio.
But what might be your explanation of that burst(s) ? (as you hold incomparably more info about the system)

[icecube51]

is it not possible that the mixing of the glycol and water occurd during the cooling process,whit running compressors?? if we start up a system whit a glycol mixture,we let it run for at least 12 Hrs whitout the compressor(s) running,so the mixture is allover the same quality.

Ice

[Rio69]

It is an old system, where we added few coolers and are using existing mixture of glycol and water, which should be mixed well.
I think it is manufacturing fault.
It worked couple of days before burst.

Rio

[Sandro Baptista]

Hi Rio,

I think the burst was caused by ice. The plate exchanger probably didn't burst because probably is a semiwelded type with gaskets which allow some ice expansion.

The bends of the aircoolers are destroyed because in that location the ice cannot expand further.

The mixture is 30% ethylene glicol in old times but probably with glycol leaks the Client only replace with pure water .

I'm sorry man for what happen.

Regards

[lowcool]

tend to go along with sandro rio had a stand buy pump on glycol and thought bearings where seized,stripped the stages and all i found was ice,probably not relevant to your situation,one would think that eveything works at time of commission.its been their for three years.thank the lord for keg rooms