An innovative and highly efficient cooling system, supplied and installed by award-winning Hampshire engineers, is streamlining the production process for one of the UK’s leading food industry supplier at its manufacturing plant near Ely, Cambridgeshire.
Aqua Group, an industrial cooling specialist engineering company with offices in Hampshire and York, designed the bespoke and future-proof chiller system for Anson Packaging Ltd, part of Danish-based multinational Faerch Plast Group, which manufactures food-to-go packaging.
Previously, Faerch Plast was using ammonia chiller technology at its sites worldwide, but when Aqua introduced the company to a bespoke system utilising state-of-the-art glycol-free free-cooling and magnetically-driven centrifugal compressor chillers, Aqua’s predicted efficiencies and the forecast benefits impressed Faerch Plast senior management, and Aqua was awarded the contract.
Aqua supplied to the Anson site two 700kW and two 800kW air-cooled, thermosyphon free-cooling Turbocor chiller units working on R134a refrigerant. The system design spreads the cooling load, ensuring that optimum cooling and ultra-high efficiency levels are achieved at all times. The compressors are most efficient when operated under part-load. Additionally, the system has full built-in redundancy: if there should ever be a malfunction, the process will maintain full cooling. The system also enables free cooling to be achieved in a higher ambient tempera-ture than normal.
In terms of overall electrical running costs the Turbocor solution is 60 per cent more efficient compared with traditional scroll compressors that have integrated free cooling.
The Turbocor technology works with variable flow, allowing it to operate with just a primary pump set. This is an energy-saving alternative to traditional scroll compressors, which require both a fixed flow and a secondary pump set. Aqua’s design removed a total of 94kW of fixed pump and fan motor energy from the installation.
Customer satisfaction runs high according to a Faerch Plast representative: “We are very happy with Aqua Cooling’s work, from the state-of-the-art cooling technology the firm provided and the project management of both the pipework installation and chillers, to the very professional level of aftercare.
“Thanks to the Turbocor technology, we can now achieve maximum efficiency at a reduced load. We no longer have excess machinery on standby in case of servicing or faults, which is something that has always seemed a waste of investment to me. The Aqua system does all this, all while increasing the COP — we couldn’t be happier with Aqua’s work!”
