There are multiple methods of charging water cooled chillers, but some of these methods are more advanced and can be intimidating to work with. In this chiller training I'd like you to leave understanding a simple direct charging method for water cooled chillers.
Direct charging is quite simply, the outlet of the refrigerant cylinder feeds into the inlet port of your recovery machine and then the outlet of your recovery machine feeds into your charging port connected to the bottom of the evaporator on the Chiller. This is a very simple method but if you attempt to use your vapor port of your cylinder to charge with at the volumes that a water cooled Chiller uses, you will be here quite a while trying to make this work. To do this effectively we need to add one additional, more advanced, step to your process.
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When you connect to your refrigerant cylinder, be sure to connect to the liquid port of that cylinder. This will mean that you should use a recovery machine that is capable of pumping liquid refrigerant. While there are industrial options on the market that are expensive and difficult to transport, two off the shelf options would be a Appion G5twin or a NAVAC NRDC4M. While both of these are great machines, something that is critical to do is ensure that you are using the largest hoses you can, meaning at least a 3/8 or more. If you only have 1/4 hoses then you will need to make sure that your core depressors are removed. You will have issues moving liquid refrigerant if you do not have adequate flow through your hoses, this is when the pumps shutter and begin to break themselves.
Being comfortable moving liquid refrigerant is essential when you begin to service equipment at this scale. On average with an appropriate setup you can charge a 120lb cylinder in roughly 30 to 45 minutes. It would take hours if you attempted to do this off of just the vapor.
Make sure that you always follow safe refrigerant practices. You should always flow water on your refrigerant barrels to protect them from freezing when charging a chiller. There are more advanced methods to this such as pre-charging vapor or using a push pull charging method. I would recommend that you take the time to research these methods and begin to implement them as you gain experience.
