Background

The MediBank IceHouse is located in Melbourne’s Docklands area and is the Australia’s largest and most respected ice arena.

In such applications, a reliable and efficient refrigeration system is essential to ensure constant temperature and to keep air humidity under control. Without a proper refrigeration system many problems may arise, such as excessive humidity, with the resulting condensation and dripping, and uneven surface.

Purposes

The purpose of the project was the replacement of the existing chiller with a newer and more efficient one for the Melbourne ice rink. The existing installation had some weaknesses: it could only run on ice making duty at 80l/s at -12 °C and did not consider the humidity issue. Therefore, the main aim of the project was to ensure temperature and humidity to remain constant and under control. In addition to that, it was also necessary to design the unit so that it could be completely dismantled and then fit back together within the technical room.

Project

The project developed by Geoclima concerned the design and production of one chiller GHH B2240 WT-04 with screw compressor and 770 kW of cooling capacity. The main peculiarity of this unit lies in the evaporator, which has been developed by Geoclima R&D division together with CROM engineers so that it can run at two different duties: at 80l/s at -12 °C on ice making duty and at 40l/s on dehumidification duty. A standard solution, as the one previously installed, cannot run on both duties, with resulting problems either on “ice making” or on “dehumidification” mode: that’s why Geoclima designed this special solution.

Besides the working issue, this was a very challenging project also from the installation point of view. Indeed, it was necessary to design the unit so that it could be completely dismantled, skated over the ice, lifted into a ceiling hole of around 1880 mm2 and then fit back together within the technical room.

Results

Most companies walked away from this project since it required a very innovative approach and solution. Thanks to the ability to adapt to the different working and installation conditions and to the maximum optimization of available technologies, Geoclima has been able to provide a cutting-edge and unique solution and to meet all specific client’s requirements.