Commercial refrigeration VIC uses a vapour-compression system to keep food and beverages fresh. These systems are a staple in restaurants and other food service businesses.
Commercial refrigerators often get a lot of use and can develop issues over time. Early warning signs include food expiry and spiked energy bills.
Refrigerators
Commercial refrigeration equipment is used in supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and schools to preserve perishable foods. It can range from small display cases for ice cream to large walk-in refrigerated storage rooms.
Refrigerators use a gas-based refrigerant to cool and absorb heat from the food inside the fridge. They do this by utilizing the second law of thermodynamics (the principle that hot things will exchange heat with colder items).
The first step is to pump warm air into the compressor, which forces the refrigerant vapour through a system of coils called the condenser. It condenses the refrigerant into a liquid at high pressure.
The second step is to pull the cooled refrigerant out of the condenser and into the evaporator. The evaporator is part of the refrigerator that’s closest to the food. It’s also where the refrigerant absorbs all the heat from the food inside. The evaporator is often coated with metal fins to make transferring heat easier for the refrigerant.
Freezers
Freezers are often used in commercial refrigeration to preserve food items for long periods. They are usually attached to a refrigerator, or they can be standalone units. The type of freezer you choose can impact how long it lasts and the unit’s price. Stainless steel freezers are usually more durable than other types.
Several parts comprise a freezer, including a cooling pipe and a pump that sucks vapour from the cooling line. It turns the liquid into a gas, and when it floats away, it takes some heat out of the freezer.
This process repeatedly repeats, bringing in more liquid to turn into vapour. The pump sucks in more and more of this vapour, making the whole thing feel colder. So, the next time it sucks in more moisture, it will turn it into a gas and take some more heat out. Eventually, the whole process will work again, and the freezer will keep its temperature low enough to store foods properly.
Cooling Towers
Cooling towers recirculate water systems that remove waste heat from various commercial refrigeration VIC applications. They can be found in industries such as power plants, chemical processing, steel mills, and many manufacturing processes where process cooling is required.
They can also be used in comfort cooling for large commercial buildings such as airports, hotels, and schools. They are primarily hyperboloid, doubly-curved concrete shell structures supported on a series of concrete struts.
The warm water is pumped to the top of the tower structure, where gravity distributes it over a surface known as the fill or wet deck. It increases surface area and air and water flow contact time to enhance heat transfer, and the air exits the tower through louvres or openings in the bottom panel. Those openings may be designed as a cross-flow or counter-flow design.
Cooling Cabinets
Keeping equipment excellent inside cabinets is essential for maximizing the life of cabinet-housed hardware. Various cooling methods are available, but the most effective is usually air conditioning.
When choosing cooling hardware, it is essential to correctly size the system for the equipment’s heat load within the enclosure. It is especially true when adding new equipment upsets the balance between cooling capacity and heat load.
A fan system can remove hot air from a cabinet and exhaust it from sensitive components. Depending on the application, these ventilation fans can be installed on the cabinet’s top, bottom or sides.
Fan trays are also a standard solution for directing airflow to specific hot spots in a cabinet. These are typically tube-axial fans daisy-chained together and can be mounted directly below sensitive equipment or hot spots that would be difficult to reach using an exhaust fan alone. They are often used with other ventilation fans, such as a blower, to maximize the system’s efficiency.