History in the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Industry: Breakthrough of Large Positive Displacement Rotary Compressors in the Second Half of the 20th Century PDF

Only two classes of compressors were offered at the end of the 1950s in the United States for large air conditioning and refrigeration applications: the positive displacement reciprocating and the dynamic centrifugal machines. Reviewing manufacturers' catalogs of water chillers showed that the capacity range of the two classes overlapped. The authors of a 1961 paper came to the following conclusions:

"The hermetic reciprocating compressors should be competitive with centrifugals up to approximately 250 ton in normal comfort cooling applications...will best serve the purpose for applications where the compression ratios are high or highly variable and in all applied systems requiring direct expansion air-handling units, remote air cooled or evaporative condensers."