Most likely yes to both. The engineer that decided to upsize the chiller should know this.
I'm working on a project where they want to upgrade an old 60 ton chiller to dual 40 ton chillers. 2 questions:
1)will the cooling towers need to be replaced/upgraded?
2)will the water coils in the supplied AHU need replaced/upgraded?
This building doesn't have a capacity problem, just upgrading old equipment.
Most likely yes to both. The engineer that decided to upsize the chiller should know this.
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Tell Mr. Engineer bigger isn't better. If 60 tons did the job, why buy 2 and go bigger? If you have a 40 ton air handler, I doubt you get any benefit from his idea other than redundancy. Would need a 60 ton air handler and new duct system for additional capacity.
Could the building hang on one 40ton chiller? Will the new chillers rotate? VFD's on the CHW pumps? Differential pressure control on the chiller barrells? These are questions that could help you understand what the engineer is intending, right or wrong. If both chillers need to run then I can see many changes being needed.
As others have said – Yes and No
It is not just a plug and play type of thing. The whole system needs to be evaluated by an engineer.
For example: If the cooling tower is oversized then perhaps it could be re-used, but in general no. Chillers and cooling towers are flow-based equipment - each chiller will need the proper condenser water flow and temperature drop. One 40-ton chiller should work fine on a 60 ton cooling tower, but when the second one is started the system will need to flow 80 tons of condenser water unless the system is changed to variable flow. So pumps and possibly even piping may need to be changed.
The air handlers coils would not need to change, but 80 tons of cooling may start to cycle compressors, etc if not designed for variable speed.