In the scorching summer, while people are enjoying the coolness brought by air conditioners, few would think of the unsung heroes that support the operation of modern life and industry - the chiller. This seemingly ordinary device is actually the "cooling hand" that maintains the normal operation of modern society and plays an irreplaceable role in key fields such as healthcare, manufacturing, and data centers.

The working principle of a chiller embodies the fundamental wisdom of thermodynamics. Through the coordinated operation of the four core components - the compressor, condenser, expansion valve and evaporator - the chiller completes the phase change cycle of the refrigerant, achieving the transfer and discharge of heat. This technical path based on the reverse Carnot cycle demonstrates how humans ingeniously utilize natural laws to serve themselves. From the early absorption refrigeration to the modern centrifugal chiller, technological progress has constantly broken the record of energy efficiency ratio. Nowadays, the magnetic levitation centrifuge can even achieve a COP value of over 10.0, generating more than 10 units of cooling capacity per kilowatt-hour of electricity. This energy utilization efficiency can be regarded as a miracle of industrial civilization.

In the field of industrial production, chillers play a key role in temperature control. Semiconductor manufacturing requires a constant temperature environment of ±0.1℃, precision injection molding has strict requirements for mold temperature, and the pharmaceutical process must maintain stable low-temperature conditions - all these high-precision and advanced industries cannot do without the precise temperature control of chillers. Especially in chip manufacturing, the cooling system of the photolithography machine needs to keep the temperature fluctuation within 0.01℃. Any slight temperature deviation may lead to the production of defective equipment worth hundreds of millions of yuan. Chillers thus quietly safeguard the "lifeline" of modern industry and have become an indispensable infrastructure for high-end manufacturing.

The central air conditioning system in commercial buildings also relies on the stable operation of chillers. According to statistics, the air conditioning energy consumption of a large commercial complex can account for 40% to 60% of the total electricity consumption, and the adoption of high-efficiency water chillers can reduce air conditioning energy consumption by more than 30%. Take the Shanghai World Financial Center as an example. The two-stage compression centrifugal chiller it adopts can save several million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, and the reduced carbon emissions are equivalent to planting thousands of trees. This "invisible" contribution to energy conservation is quietly changing the carbon footprint of cities.