Cold Link Africa July/August 2019 | Page 18

PROJECT INCORPORATING COLD CHAIN 1 2 4 3 specifications while Phase 2 was still under construction directly next door (including demolishing the building butting onto the Phase 1 cold room). All credit must go to Abbeydale for the extremely professional manner in which planning and execution of these operations were carried out. Another unexpected challenge that materialised during the course of the project was that the main power supply cable to the Phase 1 refrigeration system ran right through the middle of the Phase 2 demolition site. This cable had to be carefully avoided and not damaged as the power it provided was running the entire electrical supply to Phase 1 which was holding many millions of rands worth of stock. The demolition went ahead and the cable survived to tell the tale without any glitches. Additionally, it must be noted that the total project duration was roughly 18 months with hundreds of technicians and artisans on site at any given time under extreme pressure, but safety was never neglected and no one was hurt. 5 SUSTAINABILITY MATTERS 1. HC Heat’s evaporators used for Phase 1 room. 2. Stab-a-load vertical opening electric doors (6m high opening). 3. Cold Room 1’s large vertical sliding doors with the evaporators located above. 4. Doorway from Cold Room 1 to the freezer. 5. Colcoil evaporator in despatch. 18 Installing the plant in the cool plant room environment and using oversized condensers ensures that compressors run with the optimal coefficient of performance (COP) for an air-cooled synthetic refrigerant plant by keeping condensing temperatures right down. This was critical as the electrical consumption for a plant of this scale is significant in the overall operation costs. Another key feature to the efficiency of this plant is the extra capacity installed, which means that the plant operates with a duty cycle of five minutes on, 10 minutes off, reducing kWH usage by not labouring all day long. A unique and often overlooked sustainable feature of this project was that for Phase 2 of the project, an existing www.coldlinkafrica.co.za 1 500m² cold room was removed to make way for a new one twice as high as the old one. The original brief was to demolish the room with a ball and chain as the tight timeline did not allow for weeks of careful dismantling to save the panels and plant. We could not stand by and watch all that polystyrene and steel go from a fully functional cold room to an enormous mess of polystyrene balls on a dump site. After much discussion with the client, it was agreed that if we mobilised a large enough work force with precise execution of dismantling panels straight onto trucks (as there wasn’t enough space to store the goods on site), Imperial would agree to let us reclaim the cold room. In the end, the cost of demolishing the cold room was saved and instead Imperial received money for its reclaimed cold room. The entire structure now stands in Brits at a factory that makes ice lollies, providing value once again. The client was extremely appreciative of the fact that they didn’t miss a day of operation during the entire construction period. VALIDATION PROCESS To sign a cold room off to be ready for the introduction of their clients’ products, Imperial Logistics runs a very stringent commissioning process which they call “validation”. During the validation period, temperatures are logged at the various points around the room and various units are tripped to see how the system would handle it. Fans are also tripped to see the impact of failures to make sure that even COLD LINK AFRICA • July/August 2019