20 years of QUANTUM: the success story of an innovative and sustainable chiller
20 years of QUANTUM, 20 years of powerful performance, outstanding reliability and high efficiency – our chiller’s birthday is the perfect opportunity to look back on the two decades of history of this flagship series.
The success story of the QUANTUM began in 2003. That year saw the debut of the water-cooled QUANTUM Water with oil-free magnetic-bearing compressor technology and a capacity of up to 1.8 megawatts. And the debut was successful: the very same year, ENGIE Refrigeration won the German Industry Innovation Award for its new chiller. In 2007, we launched our modular ellipse-based design and extended the capacity range to up to 2.4 megawatts. In addition, our experts developed the first air-cooled QUANTUM Air, which offers a cooling capacity of between 250 kilowatts and two megawatts and is considered the most efficient air-cooled chiller with magnetic-bearing compressor technology on the market.
QUANTUM: a trailblazer for performance and sustainability
But the ENGIE Refrigeration team did not rest on its laurels. In 2013, the third QUANTUM generation, with an optional open-flash economizer, extended the capacity range to up to 3.3 megawatts. Two years later, it became possible to operate the series with the low-GWP refrigerant R-1234ze, which opened up new sustainable and forward-looking prospects for the cooling industry. In 2016, the series was once again in top form, thanks to the addition of the QUANTUM Power chiller with a cooling capacity of up to eight megawatts. The newly designed air-cooled series was launched in 2019, followed in 2021 by the new water-cooled series, with the four refrigerants R-1234ze, R-515B, R134a and R513A and a cooling capacity of around four megawatts. An impressive history, which demonstrates how progress and innovation have always been top priorities for ENGIE Refrigeration – then as now. They have been essential in enabling the QUANTUM to set new standards in performance, energy efficiency and sustainability for the past two decades.
One chiller, numerous applications
This urge to innovate drives not just ENGIE Refrigeration as a company, but also many other different industries. Today, more than 4,600 QUANTUM chillers from ENGIE Refrigeration are providing a sustainable cooling supply around the world; about 3,650 of them are water-cooled models and around 1,000 are air-cooled (as of June 2023). And demanding applications are a speciality of our QUANTUM. Our chillers promise absolute reliability, whether they are cooling the Amadeus Data Processing GmbH data centre or simultaneously cooling ten data centres run by a German operating company. The QUANTUM also demonstrates its strengths at the Schön Klinik Vogtareuth, the Liverpool Hospital in Australia and a medical centre in Bavaria. In addition, the QUANTUM is providing maximum energy and performance efficiency for a chemicals company from Singapore and for ARBURG, a globally leading machine manufacturer.
Here’s to many more years of QUANTUM!
After two promising decades of the QUANTUM, it’s clear that the chiller’s success story will continue. Innovative technologies from ENGIE Refrigeration create space for new milestones – but the company’s aim remains unchanged: to make the most powerful, energy-efficient and thus sustainable refrigeration solutions. That means there will be plenty of reasons to celebrate market innovations and QUANTUM anniversaries in the coming years – and that’s something that machine operating companies can look forward to!
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