Emergency chiller saves frozen food

A fire in the switch room destroyed the switchgear and controls for a chiller plant at a food wholesaler’s cold storage facility. Millions of pounds worth of food would spoil unless a temporary chiller could be up and running fast.

The cold store was vast – 25,000 cubic metres – and had an unusually high ceiling, plus it needed 200 kW of cooling duty at -25oC. It was the height of summer so there was no time to spare – a temporary chiller was needed quick.

The call came in on Wednesday night – we mobilised a team of experts and by Sunday afternoon we had a cooling package successfully up and running.

We installed two cooling packages each comprising a 350 kW specialist very low temperature water-cooled chiller with a fluid off temperature of -30oC. We linked each one to a 400 kW air cooled chiller for heat rejection.

Inside we mounted seven 50 kW low temperature air handling units, high up on racks, for maximum efficiency in the vast storeroom. For fail-safe power we synchronised two 1250 kVA generators – one to run and one as back-up.

Our specialist low temperature chillers achieve much lower temperatures at higher capacities than standard chillers, which meant the project needed fewer chillers and air handlers to reach the required -25oC.

This saved time and money, as well as space on the site. Putting the air handlers on high racks also saved space and maximised airflow in the storeroom.

Despite it being the height of summer (when rental chillers are in high demand) we reached the low temperatures needed and had everything up and running by the weekend. We got temperatures down to the levels required and saved £2.5m of valuable food that risked spoiling in the summer heat.