HVAC

144BTU/pound.

There are on-line converters that will do the math for you.

One ton is 12000 Btus (of cooling)

I should have said 12,000 BTUs / hour

"144BTU/pound". Here is a little more explanation.

The latent heat of fusion for ice is 144 BTU/lb. For one ton, that is 2000 lb x 144 BTU/lb, or 288,000 BTU. Refrigeration's roots are in the ice making industry, and the ice guys wanted to convert this into ice production. If 288,000 BTU are required to make one ton of ice, divide this by 24 hours to get 12,000 BTU/Hr required to make one ton of ice in one day.

This well worded expansion of lynlynch and rhkramer's comments is from the internet, but now I cannot find it again to properly credit it.

Thanks. I suppose I was too economical with words.

It is important to realize that 144Btu/lb, i.e. "latent heat of fusion", is the amount of energy required to change the phase of water from a liquid state to a solid state. The point being that the liquid water begins the process at 32F (0C) and ends the process at 32F (0C); not STP, for example.

Apologies if this appears obvious, but I frequently encounter misunderstandings surrounding this concept.

Note carefully that in Doorman's GA explanation, a ton of refrigeration is a rate of 12,000 Btu/h. In your original example, it would be 60,000 Btu/h = 5 tons of refrigeration (TR). (I've underlined the /hr (per hour) part for emphasis, but it wouldn't normally be underlined.)

There might be a possible variation. In Japan and some other places, there is a Japanese Refrigeration Ton (JRT) that equals freezing one metric ton of water per day, which is about 13,200 Btu/h (I forget the exact number).