Plans were made to establish a new, state-of-the-art bottling facility in Kannapolis, NC. The mission of this 300,000 square foot production facility is to co-pack up to 1,500 cans per minute of a wide variety of product lines.
Refrigeration Design & Service (RD&S) was selected to design and construct a chilled glycol system to meet the facility’s production demands. This system needed to be flexible to handle varying load conditions based on differing product temperatures and production speeds. A custom ammonia to glycol chilling skid was designed to meet this requirement. The skid featuring Frick compressors and heat exchangers was fully constructed in our Fairless Hills, PA fabrication facility and shipped to site where it was interconnected with the RD&S supplied evaporative condensers. All skid mounted components were pre-piped and insulated. Motors, control devices and sensors were pre-wired to RD&S built motor control panels and control system panels. The electrical/control system design included VFDs for all refrigeration system drive-motors. Not only did the variable frequency drives offer energy efficiency improvements, they also offer the flexibility needed to meet the customer’s various operating scenarios.
Before shipping the 45’ long, 60,000 lb. skid, our service team wrung out the complete electrical system and pressure tested the components and piping. A dry-nitrogen holding charge was added and the package was shrink wrapped for safe shipping.
Once the skid arrived, RD&S took care of the rigging, the IMP machine room enclosure, and the field piping to two evaporative condensers. A few hundred feet of chilled glycol piping later, and the customer was provided with a dedicated +28°F chilled glycol system for their production loads. This system utilizes 3-way valves to properly distribute flow to two filler lines, one process chiller, and three 30,000 gallon mix tanks. Our chiller is fully integrated with the customer’s building management system, allowing Prime Beverage to view the operating conditions of the chiller in conjunction with their ever changing production loads.
RD&S is always ready to address your refrigeration needs.