New Cooling Plant Helps Farming Business Harvest Energy Benefits

When a fresh produce company was looking to replace their ageing chiller equipment, energy efficiency, reliability and ease of maintenance were at the forefront of their mind when it came to selecting their replacement cooling system.

Based in the East of England, our client has been growing, harvesting, and processing potatoes and root vegetables such as onions, carrots and parsnips, for over 100 years. They pack their own produce daily for distribution across the UK and further afield, as well as packing for other retailers.

Their factory had expanded over the 15 years so much it left the chiller on the roof with the only access being a man-way or 25 metre reach crane. Good news for the company but bad news for the chiller unit!

Aqua’s design team proposed an entirely new cooling plant for the factory which would provide cooling for all areas of the process – from the initial washing and cleaning of the vegetables right through to keeping the packed produce stored at exactly the right temperature before despatch to the retailers.

Our solution provided run and standby capacity by incorporating two chillers into the system, rather than just one. This gives built in redundancy with every component (including the evaporators) – in the rare event that a component should ever fail. It also focused on energy saving, utilising our range of SBS scroll compressor fluid chillers which are extremely efficient.

The system feeds chilled water at -5°C and operates on 30% monoproperlyne (food safe) glycol. The units were also positioned on site to ensure ease of accessibility for routine maintenance.

Full specification included:

• 2 x SBS chiller units
• Duplex pump skid
• Inverter controls
• Monoproperlyne (food safe) glycol
• Full system design
• Weir tank
• BMS System

With maintenance issues resolved and a system harnessing state of the art cooling technology, our client will be harvesting the benefits for years to come!