Cooling system including hydraulic liquid-refrigerant compressors and expanders for delivering pressurized liquid to the compressors

Abstract

A chiller includes a plurality of hydraulic compression units, each compression unit configured to compress a refrigerant at gaseous state with liquid and exhaust the compressed refrigerant; a condenser for condensing the compressed refrigerant; a plurality of expander units, each expander unit configured to expand condensed refrigerant into a vapor-liquid mixture, to displace liquid during expansion of the condensed refrigerant, and to displace the expanded vapor-liquid mixture of refrigerant through introduction of liquid; an evaporator for evaporating the expanded refrigerant; a conduit for delivering the evaporated refrigerant back to the hydraulic compression units; and a plurality of valves configured between the plurality of expander units and hydraulic compression units, such that the liquid displaced from each expander unit is delivered to a hydraulic compression unit to thereby assist in the exhaust of the compressed refrigerant.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.