ACTING on the advice of its refrigeration contractor Dresdner Kuhlanlagenbau and DuPont Refrigerants, German harbour logistics company, Hamburger Hafen Logistik (AG) (HHLA) is already addressing forthcoming refrigerant legislation by initiating a pilot project to convert several refrigerated warehouses to the non-ozone-depleting Isceon refrigerant. It is the first company at the harbour development in Hamburg to do so.
There are a further ten refrigeration systems at HHLA used for the storage of bananas and pineapples, which still operate with R22 or R402A. However, the managers of these cold storage houses, Bernhard Albiser and Horst Stroh, do not want to run the risk of potential fines or being unable to find a contractor with spare capacity to carry out the work so are proactively tackling the conversion issue in advance of the deadline.

A smaller refrigerated warehouse for bananas was selected by the company for a pilot project. The company’s decision to take this initial step was prompted by consultation from Andreas Borst, service manager at DKA’s sales and services office in Hamburg, who is responsible for servicing the refrigeration systems at HHLA and Joachim Gerstel, market development manager for Isceon refrigerants at DuPont.

The interconnected system, using R22 has been used in the warehouse since 1993 to cool four similar-sized banana stores with a total volume of 2100m3. The storage temperature for such items needs to be maintained as close to +13.5°C as possible.

The conversion to Isceon, decided upon at the end of August 2006, was carried out just a few weeks later by Bernd Wedemann, refrigeration unit engineer at DKA, who was impressed by its simplicity: “Virtually no technical modifications to the unit were required.” The main advantage for the end-user said Bernhard Albiser, technical manager at HHLA was that operations were not disrupted by the conversion, saving both time and money.

As part of its Isceon refrigerant series, DuPont offers three easy-to-use HFC replacements for R22 which have been developed specifically for use in medium- and low-temperature applications as well as in air conditioning. All three products offer the benefit of compatibility with MO and AB lubricants in existing units, thus a change of oil type to more expensive POE oil is not required. This saves material costs, time and manpower. Energy consumption can also fall as a direct result of the conversion, as has been documented through numerous previous conversions.

DuPont

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