Advantages of Remote Condensing Units for your Chambers & Rooms

Condensing units are essential for controlling the climate within plant growth chambers. Their purpose is to maintain precise temperature conditions required for a variety of plant research applications. Normally the condensing unit is integrated with the plant growth chamber or room and positioned above or beside the unit.

However, remotely locating condensing units and positioning them in one central location offers several benefits. By locating condensing units away from where your chambers and growth rooms are situated, controlled environment facilities can significantly reduce noise and simplify maintenance during routine operations among other benefits.

This article will explore the advantages of remote condensing units for plant growth chambers and rooms and offer a behind the scenes look at how the integration of remote condensing units at Iowa State University’s (ISU) controlled environment facility contributes to making it a global center of excellence for plant science research.

Quick Takeaways:

• Conviron worked with Iowa State University to install remote condensing units in a designated area approximately 50 feet from their research area, replacing older, less efficient units.

• Remotely locating your condensing units offers opportunities for noise reduction, space efficiencies and lowers the risk of disruption to your research.

• Remote condensing units also free up space for more plant growth chambers in research areas, maximizing your growth area and enabling greater scalability of chambers and rooms in the same area.

Why Consider Remote Condensing Units?

Remote condensing units offer distinct advantages. By locating the units away from the experiment areas where the growth chambers and rooms are situated, facilities can capitalize on several key benefits:

• Noise Reduction: The distance and walls separating the research area from the room in which the compressors and fans are running, avoids introducing noise to the research area. While it is normal to have ambient noise in most plant research facilities, when it is removed it noticeably creates a more pleasant workspace for researchers and facility staff alike.

• Space Efficiency: By relocating the refrigeration systems away from the growth chambers researchers can dedicate more of their available space for maximizing their growth footprint of the chambers, enabling larger growing space and thus more plants for experimentation purposes.

• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Centralizing condensing units simplifies maintenance and service routines. Maintenance staff will have to spend less time in the research space with tools and other equipment should it be necessary to work on the refrigeration systems. Separating the work of the maintenance group from the research group to the extent possible, minimizes the chance of disruption to ongoing research.

Connecting to your facility’s chilled water systems would be an alternative method for achieving many of the same benefits – although with chilled water systems there are some limitations such as achieving very low temperatures in your chambers or rooms.

Case Study: Iowa State University

Conviron recently worked together with ISU to install remote condensing units at their research facility in the Department of Agronomy. At the start of the initiative, the facility already had an existing research space with several Conviron chambers and rooms featuring standard refrigeration systems located at the chamber/room. Conviron’s engineering team worked collaboratively with the ISU team to remove the old condensing units and install new remote units in a separate room.

Being located in a basement and, with some areas have a very low ceiling, the area in which the existing plant growth chambers were located was overall a tighter than usual environment. With over 20 units running at the same time and in such a confined space the combination of compressors and fans can create a higher noise level compared to if that same space had a fewer number of units.

The condensing unit room that the University assigned was also located in the basement area but adjacent to all the growth chambers. Moving these units to a separate space—about 50 feet away from the main research space—created a quiet and separate research space that service teams no longer had to enter in order to perform repairs or maintenance.

The installation did have some technical challenges, such as sizing the lines appropriately to reach the chambers from the remote condensing units. There was also additional engineering involved in designing the stacked arrangement of the condensing units given the dimensions of the room available in addition to extra materials and installation time to lay the length of piping required.

While there are planning, implementation and installation challenges with remote condensing units, the tailored solution that Iowa State University received does have substantial benefits over the long term. Selecting a controlled environment manufacturer to support a project like this one is critical - underscoring the importance of working with a team that has industry-specific expertise when it comes to delivering customized, premium solutions.

For more examples of cooling systems for plant growth chambers and rooms, see the chart below which discusses several of the advantages and considerations for various systems that may be right for you:

Looking ahead, as more and more facilities seek to scale and optimize their plant and agriculture research facilities, remote condensing units do offer advantages. While it may not be possible with your facility considering your space and budgetary constraints, premium solutions like remote condensing systems offer several advantages for facility planners and researchers alike.