Frozen food specialist Farmfoods has chosen cooling expert Star Refrigeration to deliver an environmentally conscious refrigeration package using zero carbon ammonia at their brand new facility in Bristol.

The new distribution centre will supply the southern retail stores and requires exceptional efficiencies across a wide range of operating conditions and the capability to increase refrigeration capacity for future potential requirements.

Star Refrigeration, the largest independent cooling and heating contractor in the UK, design and install two modular coldstore Azanechiller packages and a chillstore Azanefreezer package, both with spare refrigeration capacity to accommodate future additional load.

The Azane range was developed in response to environmental legislation and uses non ozone depleting, zero GWP ammonia.

The total installation offers numerous benefits including low maintenance and reduced energy consumption, as well as the environmental advantages associated with ammonia as a natural refrigerant.

James Ward, Star’s Director of Food Sales says: “The Azanechiller offers a significant increase in performance compared with standard HFC chillers.

Its packaged design and careful industrial component selection result in an ultra low refrigerant charge, with all ammonia contained within the chiller and outside the production facility. This means a refrigerant charge as little as 0.1kg per kW”.

The coldstore packages also utilise waste heat recovered from the refrigeration systems to heat a glycol underfloor heater mat contained within the coldstore floor slab.

The system includes a 2 year warranty as well as a 5 year preventative maintenance programme. Both the coldstore and chillstore systems have remote dial in/out access and the maintenance package includes a number of condition based monitoring techniques such as vibration monitoring, thermographic scans and oil sampling.

Star developed the Azanechiller and Azanefreezer to meet the cooling requirements in a wide range of markets. Suitable for cooling direct refrigerant, water and glycol, these packages are ideally suited to applications in food processing, temperature controlled storage, building services and process cooling.