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Alicedale Pack House-Blueberry Farm Quad Omega Rack Project
The Alicedale Pack house, located near Rustenburg, is a pack house dedicated to the packing and distribution of blueberries. The general purpose will be to export the berries internationally.
The owner of the pack house started investigating cold chain possibilities for blue berries throughout the world. With the knowledge of multiple local and international cold chain solutions, he got in contact with Solo Refrigeration to make the best possible cold chain a reality.
Design Requirements
The first phase of the pack house consists out of a receiving area, holding area with 8 small blast chiller rooms, a processing area, a
dispatch holding area and plant room cooling. Phase one required 430kW at a suction of -5°C.
Solo Refrigeration got Metraclark Engineering involved in the design, sitting with the customer to design a flagship cold chain to match the technologically advanced pack house. Multiple designs were discussed with the contractor and the customer, to ensure that he approved as well as the contractor.
The force cooling rooms was designed to chill 380kg of blue berries from 30°C to 5°C in 1.5 hours. It is also required to chill 720kg of packed product from 5°C to 0°C in 3 hours.
Equipment Selection
Solo Refrigeration requested a 4 compressor multiplex, utilizing a VSD on each compressor. The resulting rack was a SCM Ref Africa Quad Omega rack designed with 4 x 6MJ-45X Copeland compressors, each with their own Schneider VSD. The rack was designed with 2 condensers, each having 6 x 800mm fans, thus totalling 12 fans. The rack uses an Eliwell rack controller and plant monitoring system. The room controllers used is also Eliwell controllers.
Design Engineer: NW du Plessis
Branch: Metraclark Nelspruit
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