Rapid temporary cold store saves more than £1,000,000 of stock

Aggreko was asked to find a rapid solution to prevent spoilage of the customers’ stored food stock when temperatures at their distribution centre’s cold store began to rise.

We worked with the customer’s refrigeration and facilities management company and discovered that the fan coil units inside the cold store were freezing up due to under performing evaporators and moisture/warm air ingress.

This resulted in reduced cooling capacity and caused the temperature in the cold store to rise.

Aggreko’s specialist temperature control team surveyed the site within four hours of the enquiry and devised a quick and cost effective solution.

The supplementary 150 kW scheme used 3 x 50 kW low temperature fluid chillers to reach a consistently low temperature of -19^oC. These units fed a total of nine low temperature air handling units inside the cold store unit.

We programmed the defrost functionality to ensure that only one of the nine air handling units defrosted at any one time, and so ensured the full kW design capacity. The equipment was powered by three Aggreko generators with a combined output of 500 kVA. Our specialist low temperature air-cooled chillers are able to achieve temperatures down to -30^oC, unlike standard air cooled chillers which tend to go to -12^oC.

The ability to cool to -30^oC means the Aggreko system was able to increase the capacity of each air handler and thereby reduce the number of units required inside the store. This was especially important as space was at a premium. Remote monitoring technology checked all the equipment round-the-clock to relay critical information, such as pump performance, fuel levels and consumption rates, load monitoring and diagnostic checks.

Any alerts were received by our local engineering team, who could quickly respond if required.

Aggreko’s low temperature cooling package allowed the contractor to individually shut down elements of the refrigeration plant for repair and maintenance, while their customer were safe in the knowledge that the cold storage unit would remain at a constant temperature.

As a result, the distribution centre experienced minimal disruption and maintained its service level agreements with customers.