Events
Meanwhile. Cimco Refrigeration is marketing Mayekawa’s NH3/CO2 NewTon cooling system throughout North America. In one warehouse in California, an end user is comparing the energy efficiency of a NewTon freezer system to that of an HFC system, said Hanks McCrory, Cimco’s business development manager, national accounts. At the IARW Convention, Heatcraft highlighted its ammonia-CO2 cascade refrigeration rack, which is being deployed at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket opening this fall in Columbus, Ga., about two hours south of Atlanta. It is also designed to serve refrigerated warehousing and food processing applications. The system places the NH3 rack on the roof of a building, and a CO2 rack inside. The low-charge NH3 (400-500 pounds) is restricted to the roof, and is cooled by glycol that rejects the heat in a separate evaporative cooler. Meanwhile CO2 is cooled in the NH3 rack, liquefied and distributed through the building as brine pumped to medium-temperature applications and separately through a DX line to cold-temperature areas.
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US Cold Storage’s BIM
Everybody wants to reduce ammonia charge or get out of HFCs.”
The Piggly Wiggly system has a capacity of 100 TR, but with an additional rack the system can be scaled to 250 TR, said Ajit Kailasam, cold storage manager, Heatcraft. The store is installing a parallel R407 rack (also using CO2 as a coolant) so that an “apples to apples” comparison can be made with the NH3-CO2 system, he added. More than 40 companies worldwide use M&M Refrigerations’ ammonia-CO2 system, noted Charles Toogood, vice president of business development for M&M. Toogood was a pioneer in the implementation of ammonia-CO2 systems when he worked as vice president of engineering at United States Cold Storage MG
Warehouse
The latest high-tech building innovation is known as BIM, or Building Information Modeling, used to exchange data and 3D representations among the parties involved in a facility’s construction. It helped United States Cold Storage build its latest cold storage warehouse in Covington, Tenn., including the installation of an ammonia-CO2 refrigeration system. All of this was described in an educational session at the IARW-WFLO Convention & Expo, held in late April in Orlando, FL. The 337,000-square-foot, LEED-certified warehouse, constructed last year, adjoins an existing ice cream manufacturing facility. Its NH3CO2 system – one of 11 that US Cold Storage has deployed across the U.S. -- chills ice cream down to -20°F. US Cold Storage worked with Primus Builders and Republic Refrigeration on planning and construction. US Cold Storage employed the BIM system “to enhance the team’s interaction and decisionmaking process,” said Matt Hirsch, president of Primus Builders. The team incorporated 10-12 key decision makers, including stakeholders and subcontractors. “It enables us to see problems before starting with construction, which reduces installation time,” he noted. Republic Refrigeration used the BIM tool to prefabricate much of the piping used in the ammonia-CO2 system, including condenser and compressor piping, pipe supports and control groups, as well as penthouses. “We were able to eliminate a lot of the clashes with other trades and control quality in the shop rather than the field environment,” said Walter Teeter, CEO for Republic. As a result the installation of the system took less than two months, a month or two faster than under a conventional approach.
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Accelerate America June 2015