Dual Temperature RDC

Space Engineering were approached, by a leading European meat supplier, to supply and install refrigeration equipment for a new regional distribution centre in the Southwest of England.   The new facility consists of a -20°C cold store, large +2°C chill store and +2°C chilled dispatch.

Our customer’s strategy puts emphasis on creating a sustainable future for food and want to halve their climate footprint by 2030. To fit with the energy efficient approach, we selected two CO₂ refrigeration systems.  This also offered back up to ensure continued cooling and negate a single point of failure.

The Space Engineering semi hermetic packaged refrigeration plant is air cooled and inverter driven.  Located in a ventilated plant room, each pack has:

• MT delivered capacity 87kW
• LT delivered capacity 25kW
• 4no MT Compressors
• 2no LT Compressors
• VSD Inverters
• 6K Superheat
• Traxoil Management
• Suction Discharge Isolation Valves
• HP Pressure Switch

We supplied and installed two Guntner Gas Coolers with Alimg fins & EC fans. The sub-critical performance capacity is 166.9kW, and supercritical performance of 202.7kW.  Multiple DX CO₂ evaporators were installed to both chilled areas and cold store.  All are a cleanable spec, Alimg fins and galvanised casing.

The installed Plant room ventilation has two functions, emergency ventilation in the event of a CO₂ leak and equipment cooling.  The emergency ventilation is based on 15 air changes per hour until the air volume reaches 2 0 m³/s, then it’s calculated on the largest refrigerant charge contained in any one system.

We also installed an air intake louver and extract fan suitable for 1 6 m³/s, with fan temperature control via an RDM with room set point based around the ambient conditions.

The selected control system was RDM, which offered control on temperature and automatic defrost.  The data manager monitors temperature via multiple probes.  The data can be viewed locally from PC’s / Laptops as well as remote access for live performance information.

A leak detection system was installed to monitor the plant at fixed areas, including the plant room, roof void area (around the valve stations).  The16 channel IR-em2 leak detection analyser monitors the CO2 refrigeration pack system, 8 x Valve stations, coldstore freezer, chillstore and the marshalling dispatch area. The leak relay is used to trigger the visual alarms at 3000ppm throughout the site and the spill relay is used to trigger the audio alarm.

Working closely with all the specialist contractors, the facility was commissioned and operational, within the programme dates, for a very happy customer.