Tons Of Refrigeration to Kilowatts (TR to kW)
1 ton of refrigeration equals 3.516852842 kilowatts (rounded).
How to convert tons of refrigeration to kilowatts
To convert tons of refrigeration to kilowatts, multiply the number of tons of refrigeration by 3.516852842. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply kilowatts by 0.2843451361 (rounded).
kilowatts = tons of refrigeration × 3.516852842
Example: 10 tons of refrigeration = 35.16852842 kilowatts.
Several different horsepower units exist. This site lists mechanical (745.7 W), metric (735.5 W) and electrical (746 W) horsepower separately.
About these units
Ton Of Refrigeration (TR)
12,000 BTU per hour, about 3.517 kW: the cooling power of melting one short ton of ice in a day. Air-conditioner capacity is quoted in tons.
Cooling capacity was first sold in the age of ice. The ton of refrigeration was the rate at which a machine could freeze, or an ice block could melt, one short ton of pure ice at 0 degrees Celsius in 24 hours. It grew up in the 1880s as mechanical refrigeration replaced natural ice, and Thomas Shipley of the York Manufacturing Company helped make it an industry standard in 1903.
The modern definition drops the ice and fixes the rate at 12,000 International Table British thermal units per hour, which is 3.516853 kilowatts, or about 3,026 kilocalories per hour. NIST gives the same figure as 3.516853 x 10^3 watts and does not mark it as exact. The unit survives mainly in North America, where air-conditioning and chiller capacity is quoted in tons, and a three-ton system therefore removes about 10.5 kilowatts of heat.
1 ton of refrigeration = 3,516.852842 watts (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Ton of refrigeration; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8
Kilowatt (kW)
1,000 watts. Used for the power of motors, cars and household appliances.
A kilowatt is simply the watt with the SI prefix kilo, meaning a thousand, attached. The watt was adopted into the SI in 1960 and is small next to machinery, since an incandescent night light uses about 4 W, so the thousand-watt multiple suits engines, electric motors, tools and heaters. For readers used to older units, one kilowatt is roughly 1.34 horsepower.
Small electric heaters with a single element can use about 1 kW, and a domestic electric kettle or microwave oven draws a similar amount. The average household in the United States uses about 1 kW of electric power over time. On a clear midday near the equator, a square meter of Earth's surface receives about 1 kW of sunlight. Do not confuse the kilowatt with the kilowatt-hour on an electricity bill: the first is a rate, the second is the energy used by running one kilowatt for an hour, which equals 3,600,000 watt-seconds.
1 kilowatt = 1,000 watts (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kilowatt; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (power); BIPM: SI prefixes
Related conversions
- Kilowatts to tons of refrigeration (reverse)
- Tons of refrigeration to watts
- Tons of refrigeration to horsepower
- Watts to kilowatts
- Horsepower to kilowatts
- Megawatts to kilowatts
- Gigawatts to kilowatts
- Metric horsepower to kilowatts
- BTU per hour to kilowatts
- Milliwatts to kilowatts
- Electrical horsepower to kilowatts
- Foot-pounds per second to kilowatts
- Kilocalories per hour to kilowatts
- Calories per second to kilowatts
- Ergs per second to kilowatts
See all power units.