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- Beeswax Dyson – Conditioned Potato Storage Facility
Beeswax Dyson,
The Customer
The client is a large landowner farmer in Lincolnshire with a desire to produce high quality crops for storage in a purpose built conditioned facility, designed to ensure that the potatoes stored there would reach the public in the best possible condition.
The Brief
As a forward thinking business, Beeswax Dyson were keen to invest in an energy efficient long-term solution to provide high quality storage conditions for fresh produce. They were keen to look at alternatives to traditional refrigeration systems due to the rising cost and limited supply of fluorinated refrigerants.
The new complex is capable of storing up to 7,500 tonnes of potatoes per annum, in a controlled ventilation environment.
A principal local building contractor was employed to design a building to meet these requirements.
The JD Cooling Group, along with our Omnivent colleagues, a specialist Dutch company experts in the field of providing highly efficient air circulation systems, were employed to look after all of the mechanical and electrical design and installation work associated with the environmental requirements of the building.
The Solution
JD Cooling were able to offer a system that not only uses a secondary cooling system using chilled water as the cooling medium, but removes fluorinated refrigerants by using propane as the primary refrigerant. This reduced not only the global warming potential of the system but increased the efficiency due to the design of the chillers and properties of propane as a refrigerant.
The building is a typical steel frame agricultural building, clad in the same profile cladding as used on neighbouring buildings.
Additions to the buildings that distinguish it from others are its intake and exhaust vent systems positioned on the outer side walls of the building, which provide automatic control of the airflow into the building. Internally the building is sectioned into six individual product storage areas and one large product grading area.
The JD Cooling Group along with our Omnivent colleagues were tasked with providing the environmental conditions required to meet the storage of the product.
Omnivent erected their plenum chambers in each storage facility, these are designed to hold the large circulatory fans needed to provide a flow of ambient air through the crop.
These chambers are all uniquely manufactured on site to suit the space available, and provide the means of directing the flow of air into the storage facility.
JD Cooling installed coolers in each of the storage areas, which provides the client the opportunity to store other crops where a temperature controlled environment is needed. These coolers are supported by two large chiller units positioned outside the building.
All associated pipework is routed through a purpose built plant room, fitted out by JD Cooling with system pumps, pressure vessels, and a cooling chiller control panel.
Electrical Installation
The design and installation of the electrical needs of the project was carried out by JD Power and consisted of a complete low-voltage design/ installation.
This included the installation of a 1,250 amp mains panel located in the plant room and fed directly off a new transformer.
This mains panel provided a supply to the outside chiller units, Omnivent fan control panel and the two number 250 amp sub-panels.
The sub-panels would then be used to feed local distribution boards, cooling control panels, and supplies to additional Omnivent fan control panels located throughout the building.
Control wiring to all coolers fitted throughout the project, and network cabling to a monitoring system was also carried out as part of the scope of works.
In addition, fire detection in the plant room, and the use of high powered sounder/beacons were installed in all working areas.
The building is now fully operational, with all of its storage full to capacity, and ‘to date’ all systems operating to design.
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