"Keeping fresh fruit fresh is one of the greatest challenges for all producers and essential for stoned fruit growers," explains Alan Colbourne from SRS Frigadon.
"Refrigeration design can easily be overlooked but is one of the most important investments a producer can make to ensure the delivered product is in prime condition."
The design of the refrigeration system to store the produce / crop has a huge influence on the stone fruit product and the need to reducing shrinkage, shrivel and weight loss should be prime considerations.
"Applying the latest technology, SRS Frigadon has invested heavily in the development of Secondary Refrigerant System (SRS) engineering, embracing Frigadon chillers, HYCOOL heat transfer fluids and AIA Agri-fruit heat exchangers for the fruit growing industry," said Colbourne.
"Through many year's experience supplying Secondary Refrigerant Systems they are now proving to be one of the best approaches to achieving controlled temperature conditions for the chilled storage of stone fruits. Temperature Management Control (TMC) is determined by the design of the refrigeration system and its controls over the fluid temperatures."
TMC systems must be designed to protect the physiological health of the stone fruit and in so doing will ensure even and stable chilled cold room air temperatures of 0/-1ºC following the initial rapid post harvest temperature ‘pull-down’ period of the stone fruits.
The effectiveness of these systems is achieved by the efficiencies of the Frigadon chillers coupled to the deployment of the thermodynamic HYCOOL heat transfer fluids through the AIA ‘BTL’ fully flooded Agri-fruit coils.
SRS Frigadon continues to experience an increasing worldwide demand for its Secondary Refrigeration Systems from fruit growers as supermarkets require ever higher quality of product at competitive prices.
The avoidance of product dehydration, shrinkage, wooliness, freezing injury etc and to maintain the juiciness of stone fruit is the most importance issues for the supermarket operator.
The quality of the fruits, whether cherries, peaches, plums, nectarines etc. must be maintained by the TMC package which can be achieved with the Frigadon HYCOOL chiller.
"With the increasing number of fruit growers now realising that the traditional DX (direct expansion) systems employed could be having a detrimental effect on the quality of their harvested stone fruit and profitability their future refrigeration investment plans are now being reevaluated," explains Colboure.
Product deterioration can be an inherent problem due to design weaknesses of DX systems such as temperature fluctuations, excessive defrosting, dehydration and high energy consumption together with the vulnerability of gas leaks that can be associated with such high pressure refrigerant gas installations.
Subsequent experience and development has now led the industry towards a far greater acceptance of this technique of Secondary Refrigeration System engineering.
Furthermore with the continued uncertainties related to the future use of these traditional high GWP synthetic HFC refrigerant gases for DX installations makes the choice of Secondary Refrigerant Systems a much easier decision.
Consideration of its operational ability to maintain the stored product in an excellent condition, control the costs of storage, to ensure low energy usage coupled to plant service and maintenance and the life cycle costs must all come into the equation.
Therefore by installing the Frigadon hydrocarbon R1270 natural refrigerant (zero CO2 emissions) chiller systems will provide the opportunity for the fruit grower to achieve the best results with these most Environmentally Friendly refrigeration systems that are available today.
The natural refrigerant Frigadon chillers being manufactured in stainless steel are specially engineered to accommodate HYCOOL Secondary Refrigerant System heat transfer fluids – its features being:
- HYCOOL fluids are food safe, biodegradable, non toxic and extremely dynamic and having zero GWP and zero ODP are environmentally friendly.
- HYCOOL with its much lower viscosity compared to propylene glycol means less pumping energy required thus reducing energy overhead costs.
- HYCOOL fluids operate under a safe pressure of 1.5bar whereas other systems operate at much higher pressures of 35bar and more.
This specialised industry is becoming ever more sophisticated with the progression of current technology and fruit growers / distributors / wholesalers etc are all looking at refrigeration systems that can maintain the quality of fruit, improve operational efficiency, reduce running costs and be environmentally friendly by reducing their climatic impact.
The proven performance of such SRS Frigadon chiller system engineering supported by its ‘green credentials’ has given the industry further confidence, thus paving the way for more fruit and brassica growers and food distributors to consider installing these economic and sustainable safe low pressure refrigeration systems.
SRS Frigadon Ltd – is a UK based company located in Stratford upon Avon and together with its manufacturing facilities in Sweden supplies its natural refrigerant chillers and AIA heat exchanger coils throughout Europe, North and South America and Scandinavia.
The heat transfer fluids are supplied by HYCOOL GLOBAL LTD and is as it says – a global supplier of the HYCOOL potassium formate heat transfer fluids which also operates from the same facility as SRS Frigadon Ltd in Stratford upon Avon, UK
For more information:
Alan Colbourne
SRS Frigadon Ltd
Tel: 0044 1789 450 982
Email: alan@srs-frigadon.com
www.srs-frigadon.com