Del Monte

Del Monte, a leading international fruit producer and beverages company, has built a new fresh fruit, juice and salad production facility in Dubai. The facility, which covers some 30,000 m2, consists of several air-conditioned production lines, a cold store and a cooling chamber, where 4,500 t of fruit and vegetables ripen each year. The refrigeration for the facility is provided by an indirect ammonia refrigeration system with a secondary refrigerant circuit.

Requirements

The objective was to ensure environment-friendly and efficient refrigeration.

Solution

The system’s circuit is charged with 4,000 kg of ammonia. The heated gas is condensed at 40°C by evaporative condensers. Water is used as the coolant for the high-temperature Rooms, and glycol for the low-temperature zone. The cooling is provided by four plate heat exchangers. At the high-temperature level there are three single-stage screw compressors made by Grasso, each with a refrigerating capacity of 630 kW and an evaporation temperature of 1°C. This circuit provides water chilled to 6°C, which is used to cool the higher-temperature cold stores, corridors and for the air-conditioning system as well as to create ammonia sub-cooling for the low-temperature zone, which also uses three single-stage screw compressors made by Grasso. Its evaporation temperature is -16°C and the refrigerating capacity of the compressors is slightly lower, at 600 kW per compressor. The low-temperature level supplies glycol chilled to -10°C to the processing rooms and cold stores.