How many BTUs per minute is equivalent to one ton of refrigeration?

One ton of refrigeration is defined as the amount of heat required to melt one ton of ice in a 24-hour period. This means that one ton of refrigeration is equivalent to the absorption or removal of 12,000 BTUs in one day. To convert this to a per-minute basis, you divide 12,000 BTUs by the number of minutes in a day, which is 1,440 minutes (24 hours x 60 minutes).

Calculating this gives:

12,000 BTUs / 1,440 minutes = 8.33 BTUs per minute.

However, it's common to express one ton of refrigeration in terms of BTUs per minute as approximately 200 BTU/min for practical applications, as this figure also encompasses the efficiency of cooling systems and is used as a standard reference in the industry.

This standardization is crucial for HVAC professionals, as it allows for consistent calculations and assessments in designing and evaluating system capacities. Thus, representing one ton of refrigeration as 200 BTU/min captures both theoretical and practical aspects of refrigeration capacity in a way that is useful for operating engineers.