Cold Link Africa March/April 2018 | Page 13

PROJECT INCORPORATING COLD CHAIN 1 forced cooling tunnels; two DX coils in the airlock of the cooling tunnels; two DX coils in a holding room; and two DX coils in the dispatch area. The plant is designed to rapidly cool the pulp temperature of palletised cartons of grapes to 0 o C. Each tunnel cools 24 pallets stacked with 180 cartons of grapes each. Outside of the table grape season, the cooling tunnels will freeze dates to -18 o C. To handle all the different cooling loads, the two racks operate with two suctions; that is, +5 o C and -5 o C (for table grapes) and +5 o C and -25 o C (for dates). Table grape packing is done over a period of 10 weeks and dates for a period of six months. “The annual operating hours of the plant are high compared with other table grape pack houses and therefore required unique design considerations. By incorporating the air-conditioning load of the packing area within the same racks that handle product cooling, the capital cost was reduced by more than R1-million and energy usage by 350kVA,” says Danie van Zyl of CoolCheck, who designed the plant. 4 2 1. A futuristic view of the six rapid cooling chambers designed for chilling table grapes and the freezing of dates. 5 2. Chilled water coils in the pre- coolers. 3. The first harvest of table grapes to be packed in the new Luiperdshoek pack house. 4. Louvres for the air i