Global leading confectionery company – Italy

Background

We were commissioned by one of the world’s largest confectionery company to design a cooling system for a new warehouse, characterized by a considerable storage area of ​​30000 m² (322917 ft²).

Purposes

Since these are food products, the turnover rate of the goods is quite high, which means that the warehouse fills up and empties very quickly. Therefore, the cooling demand can vary constantly and it is important that the system is able to adapt to different conditions to always provide the adequate level of cooling capacity.

In addition, the client pays particular attention to environmental sustainability, both in terms of the procurement of raw materials and in the selection of suppliers who share this corporate vision. For this reason, the designed system must employ green technological solutions to ensure the highest levels of energy efficiency with an important modularity of the refrigeration system.

Project

Geoclima has designed a system consisting of three 480 kW (136.4 RT) air-cooled chillers, each with 4 screw compressors, 4 independent refrigeration circuits and multi-channel aluminum condensers for high efficiency. The units were therefore designed in a “medium temperature” version to produce glycol at -6 °C (21.2 °F), using HFO-1234ze, the greenest refrigerant (GWP <1) available on the market.

The HFO represents the best combination in terms of performance, safety, costs and environmental benefits. And we at Geoclima know this very well because in 2012 we developed the world’s first chiller using this refrigerant.

Therefore, thanks to the special configuration designed for this project, the system has 12 independent refrigeration circuits managed in a smart way by a proportional-integral-derivative control. In this way, only the necessary refrigeration and compressor circuits are activated, so as to supply the adequate cooling capacity to the specific needs of the warehouse at all times. The highest level of modularity that can be achieved!

Results

These design solutions offer the client an extremely dynamic and customised system, perfectly suited to its needs, capable of ensuring extremely high reliability and quality performance, both as regards the conservation of the goods and the degree of energy efficiency achieved all the year round.