Refrion test chamber prompts expansion
23rd December 2016
ITALY: Refrion, the Italian cooler and condenser manufacturer, has officially opened a new €1.5m climatic test chamber, one of the largest in Europe.
The new facility, said to be the largest dedicated to the performance testing of liquid coolers, was inaugurated last Saturday at the Refrion headquarters in Talmassons, Udine.
“The facility is the end point of our manufacturing process and allows us to test Refrion-brand units under the exact operating conditions stipulated by our customers. It is an exclusive guarantee that we can offer and it allows us to add value to our offering to the customer,” said Refrion CEO Daniele Stolfo.
The 250m² test chamber can accommodate units up to 14m in length, capacities up to 2.2MW and airflows over 700,000m³/hr. Inside, temperatures can be produced ranging from 0°C up to 45°C and humidity from 40% to 70%.
The climatic chamber can be divided crosswise to adapt quickly to the size of the unit under test. From measurements it will be possible to accurately calculate the thermal exchange capacity and the energy efficiency coefficient. Noise levels can also be measured.
One part of the climatic chamber is entirely devoted to prototype testing.
“This is the most important of the operations we have planned for the three years of 2016-2018, during which period we want to achieve an aggregate turnover of around €30m annually with investments of more than €7m.”
With the opening of the climatic chamber, Refrion is now looking to increase its expansion into new markets such as North America in which it recently attained a foothold.
Refrion Group was founded in 2002 with the Xchange brand, and now has a workforce of over one hundred. It manufactures a range of air-cooled condensers, dry coolers and heat exchangers.
