Top, Soft & Stone Fruit DCA Store
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- Peake Fruit – Top, Soft & Stone Fruit DCA Store
Peake Fruit,
The customer
Peake Fruit is a first-class family-owned fruit growing, storing, and packing company producing quality top, stone, and soft fruit for supermarket customers to enjoy.
The brief
Peake Fruit wanted a cooling system, which would provide their business with world class storage conditions in order to store their high-quality top fruit for the longest possible period.
It also had to incorporate technology that would ensure highly efficient and reliable operation with engineering solutions that would ensure the system was future proof beyond the phase-down of global warming HFCs.
The solution
JD Cooling were employed by the main contractor Thurlow Nunn Standen to design and install all refrigeration services and controls to the newly built 1,800 tonne Dynamic Controlled Atmosphere (DCA) facility containing 16 chambers and central chilled alleyways for additional storage.
The CA chambers are to store apples and pears, with the possibility of using the smaller apple stores for cherries and blueberries to extend those seasons.
The secondary cooling system utilises two super-efficient, future-proof air-cooled propane chillers supplying four 80kW coolers, four 60kW coolers, six 42kW coolers and two 33kW coolers all to provide cooling to the 16 controlled atmosphere chambers.
Four 25kW coolers have also been installed within the corridor areas to temporarily store in crates, freshly picked fruit prior to being loaded into the chambers.
All coolers are fitted with variable speed (EC) fans. The chillers were supplied with heat recovery in order to store waste heat from the cooling process, which is then delivered via a warm glycol pipework system to the coolers for free defrosting.
The secondary cooling system uses Food Safe glycol designed specifically to provide ultra-stable temperature and humidity which, in conjunction with the DCA (UKCA), will provide optimal storage conditions for the product in each of the chambers, extending storage life, increasing quality and minimising weight loss.
Challenges overcome
Unforeseen ground conditions near the beginning of the project meant that the overall build programme of the whole project was delayed, however through real commitment and team work from all parties, the original handover date was achieved in time for the customer’s 2019 top fruit harvest.
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