This cold storage facility is dedicated to offering top-tier freezer storage and handling services to the U.S. Midwest region. St. Cloud Refrigeration assured the end-user of an exceptional refrigeration system and selected the premier option — Zero Zone.
The end-user selected St. Cloud Refrigeration to provide refrigeration for a cold storage warehouse in southeastern MN. This facility, dedicated to ice cream storage, spans 100,000 ft2 and requires advanced cooling solutions to maintain optimal temperatures. Leveraging their expertise, St. Cloud Refrigeration partnered with Zero Zone to meet the warehouse’s temperature control standards, ensuring reliable and energy-efficient storage for their products.
Project Requirements and Challenges
Requirement
Custom Electrical Mechanical Center (CEMC): Design a complete machinery package for rooftop installation that includes two independent refrigeration systems. All mechanical, electrical, and control components should be fully assembled inside a single insulated, weather-tight enclosure with heating, lighting, ventilation, and a single point of power.
- Temperature Control: Maintain consistent temperatures for low temperature ice cream storage at -20°F and medium temperature storage and docks up to 38°F.
- Energy Efficiency: Implement an energy-efficient refrigeration system to reduce operational costs and environmental impact.
- Capacity: The system needs to be large enough to cool 100,000 ft2 of refrigerated storage with 215 tons of freezer or cooler load and 88 tons of cooler and dock load.
- Compliance: The system needs to comply with future regulations that restrict the use of HFC refrigerants and provide a future proof solution using CO2 refrigerant.
Challenges
- System Size: One of the main challenges was fitting two large refrigeration systems into a single CEMC. These systems needed to be robust enough to meet the cooling demand and to maintain the required temperatures for ice cream storage (-20°F) while being compact enough to fit within the constraints of the CEMC.
- Transportation: Transporting and installing a 68 foot long enclosure posed another major challenge. This CEMC is larger than a typical electrical mechanical center. This required planning and coordination to ensure safe and efficient delivery to the site in southeast MN.
Innovative Solutions for Refrigeration Excellence
Compliance with Regulations
To comply with current and future regulations, this cold storage facility selected two Genesys™ Natural Refrigeration Systems, utilizing CO2 as a refrigerant. These systems were engineered at Zero Zone to operate in subcritical mode for the majority of the year, ensuring optimal energy efficiency and superior performance.
Effective equipment design enables the systems to maintain the necessary low temperatures for ice cream storage while significantly reducing energy consumption.
Advanced System Design
These Zero Zone refrigeration systems use 2-stage compression and adiabatic gas cooling to maintain effective and efficient operation throughout the year. High pressure valves and advanced controls have also been integrated into these Genesys™ systems. This ensures that the refrigeration systems can handle varying temperature demands and maintain consistent performance, even under extreme conditions. The two independent CO2 rack packages are housed within the Zero Zone CEMC.
Savings on Total Cost of Ownership
Glycol Defrost System with Heat Reclaim
One of the significant cost-saving measures implemented in this project was the implementation of a glycol defrost system with heat reclaim, instead of an electric defrost system. This decision resulted in substantial savings of $300,000 for the end-user. The glycol defrost system not only reduces installation costs but also enhances energy efficiency by reclaiming heat that would otherwise be wasted. In contrast, an electric defrost system would have required 110 amps per coil, leading to higher energy consumption.
Genesys™ Refrigeration System Specifications
Since the new system has been running, the end-user has enjoyed a $30,000 per month lower electric bill than other nearby facilities of the same square footage.
Inside this CEMC are two parallel racks with low and medium temperature capabilities, weighing a total of 70,000 pounds. The low temperature capacities of these parallel racks are 110 and 125 tons, while the medium temperature capacities are 75 tons and 18 tons, respectively. These racks were designed to maintain temperatures in the facility from -10°F to 40°F. Each of the rack systems split the freezer and cooler loads to provide efficient staging and robust capacity to the serve the refrigerated spaces.
This compact design was essential for fitting the Genesys™ systems into a single unit while ensuring ease of transportation and installation.
The custom electrical mechanical center (CEMC) housing the refrigeration systems was engineered with a compact package size of 68 x 9 x 10 feet. Despite being larger than a typical CEMC, Zero Zone facilitated smooth and efficient delivery to the site in southeast MN.
System Features
- Refrigerant: CO2 is environmentally friendly, energy-efficient and future-proof.
- CO2 can be up to 20% more efficient than traditional HFC systems.
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has projected that the price per pound of HFC refrigerants being phased out is expected to increase by 30%.
- Natural refrigerants are abundant and will not be subject to phase-out regulations.
- Cost Saving Design: Innovative features engineered to deliver lower operating costs at reduced first cost.
- Warm glycol defrosts the evaporator coils through a custom engineered heat reclaim system that saved the end-user $300,000 on installation cost over electric defrost.
- The end-user realizes $30,000 monthly electric savings over their nearby refrigerated facility of the same size.
- Customized: Custom built systems allow a system to be scaled to accommodate a facility of any size.
- Installation: An electrical mechanical center reduces installation costs and time with complete pre-assembly and pre-piping.
- Electrical mechanical centers offer flexible placement options, whether on a roof or next to the building.
Learn More About Zero Zone Industrial Refrigeration Systems
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