PROJECT
INCORPORATING COLD CHAIN
A basic breakdown of the various room
and equipment specs, is as follows:
PHASE 1
Cold room 1 (30m x 30m x 14.5m high)
Two complete refrigeration systems
with 100% standby capacity to operate
between 2°C and 8°C. 185kW cooling at
-5°C suction.
Receiving cold room 1 (9m x 5.5m x 7.2m
high)
One complete refrigeration system to
operate between 2°C and 8°C. 12kW
cooling at -5°C suction.
Air lock 1 (13m x 3.4m x 7.5m high)
One complete refrigeration system to
operate between 2°C and 8°C. 12 kW
cooling at -5°C suction.
Freezer 1 (9m x 5.5m x 5.5m high)
Four complete refrigeration systems to
operate between -25°C and -18°C. 44kW
cooling at -25°C suction
PHASE 2
Cold room 2 (40m x 30m x 14.5m high)
Three complete refrigeration systems
for 100% standby capacity to operate
between 2°C and 8°C. 270kW cooling at
-5°C suction.
Receiving cold room 1 (15m x 5.5m x
7.2m high)
One complete refrigeration system to
operate between 2°C and 8°C. 12kW
cooling at -5°C suction.
Air lock 1 (15m x 3.4m x 7.5m high)
One complete refrigeration system to
operate between 2°C and 8°C. 12kW
cooling at -5°C suction.
SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
All holding rooms meet the required
cooling capacity and there is an entire
extra condensing unit and evaporator
set to ensure redundancy in case of a
breakdown of any of the units. The gas
used here is R507 across all systems (freezer
and cold room). The total capacity of
cooling installed on site is roughly 550kW.
The refrigeration plant is located in a
plant room 6m in the air above the airlocks
and freezer rooms. The condensing units
blow their warm air via steel ducting directly
out the side of the plant room through
louvres to create a neat façade where
no one would even realise what goes on
behind those walls. This was critical to create
a neat appearance in line with Imperial
Logistics’s clean pharmaceutical image.
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ZERO DOWNTIME
All holding rooms were designed with
100% standby capacity due to the value
of product stored in these rooms and
the critical importance of keeping them
within the desired temperature bands.
To illustrate just how crucial the product
is, Imperial Logistics monitors all rooms
with a Carel Plant Visor Pro system which
monitors in excess of 10 temperature
points in each room.
If the temperature gets within 1°C of its
limits (below 3°C or above 7°C), alarms go
off and technicians must be on site within
the hour to resolve the problem.
However, this becomes a real challenge
when doors are open or rooms defrost.
To handle this, numerous evaporator coils
were installed around the rooms and the
distribution of evaporator coils is staggered
around the room so that if one system
goes down, you still have a well-balanced
cooling distribution around the room. The
plant is also set to run on a very tight band
between 3.5°C and 4.5°C to stay far from
its limits at all times.
The level of care taken to ensure that
the plant operates within the temperature
(by not skimping on redundancy and
refrigeration capacity), makes this one
of the most robust pharmaceutical cold
stores around. This could never have been
achieved without absolute critical planning
upfront. Each system is monitored by a
pre-emptive alarm system that looks at
every inch of the plant in fine detail so that
the second a fan trips or a plants gas level
starts to drop alarms go off and the plant is
restored to correct operation immediately.
We have repeater alarm boards around
the facility to ensure that alarms are noted
immediately.
In the eight years leading into this
project previous rooms were also run to
this temperature specification, proudly
never leaving the design temperature
band once!
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3
4
CHALLENGES
The biggest challenge on this project was
the extremely tight deadline. As well as
running the Phase 1 cold rooms to these tight
1. Copeland six-cylinder semi-hermetic
compressor.
2. The new storage facility is much bigger,
more than double the height of the one
that was knocked down.
3. Colcoil evaporators were used for the
Phase 2 cold room.
4. Colcoil evaporators were also used in
the freezer.
COLD LINK AFRICA • July/August 2019
www.coldlinkafrica.co.za
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