The world leader in oil-free chiller efficiency

The Smardt Chiller Group was established to maximize the customer benefits of the Turbocor oil-free centrifugal compressor technology in chiller performance. Driving whole life costs of ownership way down, your Smardt chiller saves you money, year after long year, while reducing your carbon footprint and making a major contribution to the future of the planet. Working with the Turbocor technology longer than any other HVAC manufacturer in the world, the Smardt Chiller Group has developed a lead in performance and reliability which translates into major benefits for owners – and the environment.

Global reach, single focus

Smardt (founded in Montreal, Canada in 2005 to focus on oil-free centrifugal chillers) and PowerPax (founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2000 as a specialist heat-exchanger group) , joined forces during 2005 to form the Smardt Chiller Group. After several years of rapid growth, a new Smardt factory was opened in Plattsburgh, New York in 2010, and a sales and service operation opened in Singapore. In 2011, Smardt was joined by the well-known OPK Klimatechnik business in Stuttgart, Germany – an outstanding European pioneer in oil-free centrifugal technology. And early in 2012, Smardt’s China manufacturing operations will open in Guangzhou, Guangdong. The heart of every Smardt chiller is its Turbocor oil-free centrifugal compressors, which integrate rugged magnetic bearings systems with variable-speed drive, high-efficiency centrifugal compression and on-board digital electronics to achieve a revolutionary leap, a quantum leap, in part-load energy efficiency.

A quantum leap in energy efficiency

All Smardt chillers, whether water‑cooled or air‑cooled, are designed to optimize the performance of oil-free centrifugal compressors from Danfoss Turbocor Compressors Inc. These use oil-free magnetic bearings and variable-speed drives to deliver better IPLV efficiencies than conventional oil-lubricated centrifugal, reciprocating, scroll and screw compressors. They are also highspeed – up to 48,000 rpm, very compact, very quiet, rugged and reliable. Power factor is a high .92. Proprietary magnetic bearings replace conventional oil-lubricated bearings, eliminating high friction losses, mechanical wear and high-maintenance oil management systems to deliver energy savings of 35 percent and more over conventional chillers while ensuring long-term reliability. Over 90,000 magnetic bearing machines are operating in the field, mainly in high-end vacuum pumps and CNC spindles – any innovation risk with this component technology has been long overcome. Turbocor’s one main moving part (rotor shaft and impellers) is levitated during rotation by a digitally controlled magnetic bearing system. Position sensors at each magnetic bearing provide real-time feedback to the bearing control system, 120 times each revolution, ensuring constantly centered rotation.

Decades of development

The Smardt engineering team, many with long experience actually developing the original Turbocor compressor technology, came together to bring a definitive high-performance range of water-cooled and air-cooled oil-free centrifugal chillers to the market, and to make sure each Smardt chiller saves its owners money – money in operating costs, money in maintenance costs, money because of high reliability and redundancy which practically removes mechanical risk altogether.

Algorithms used in all Smardt chiller controllers further enhance the intelligence built-in to the compressor – achieving further efficiencies across each compressor’s operating map, and further, optimizing each compressor’s intrinsic part-load efficiencies in delivering integrated chiller efficiencies that are currently unmatched.