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Do you have a refrigerant leak?

Of course, it is Friday afternoon. Your cold room is not as Cool as you would like it to be. You are still waiting for that last delivery. Your fridge guy’s phone is just ringing through. Things are definitely going pear-shaped.

So, you are Cool, you can handle it, and you’ve seen someone working on a fridge before, so you decide to take a little look-see. Maybe it is something you can fix yourself?

As you round the corner, you see your compressor iced up. “Oh, what fresh hell is this,” you mutter under your breath. Your fridge guy finally answers. “Yeah, it sounds like a leak, I am on my way!”

Often times, it is a pin prick leak somewhere, and it’s been there for a while. It so happens that today is Friday, which is as everyone in the industry knows, statistically the only day on which cold rooms stop working (okay, I made that up, but you know what I am talking about). But can you detect a leak say, on a Wednesday?

Yes, you can. The following are all signs that you might have a leak.

• It takes longer to cool down
• You have a higher electricity bill than normal
• Signs of ice build up on various parts of the system
• The compressor seems to run for longer periods before cycling out
• Funny noises, like mechanical clunks, hissing or bubbling noises

Refrigerant is not used up, like fuel. If the fridge guy diagnosis a low refrigerant, it means you have a leak somewhere. Just topping it off will not solve your problem. The leak has to be fixed before the new refrigerant is added.

Have you experienced a Friday like this? Please let us know your experiences!

How to save 10% in refrigeration costs: part 2

In our previous post on how to save 10% in refrigeration costs, we explained how to keeping correct gas levels and clean coils will save you some bucks.

In our second installment, we will get slightly more technical. There is no secret to increasing the efficiency of a vapour compression based refrigeration. Any Cool person will tell you exactly the same thing: Just raise the suction, man.

There are a few ways to raise the suction. The first and most simple is to raise the room temperature set point. By doing this, you achieve two things. First, you reduce the transmission heat load (basically the heat the comes through the walls) and second, because the set point is achieved sooner, the compressor cycles out sooner.

Of course, there is lots of thermodynamics involved, but suffice to say that the longer the compressor runs, the lower the suction pressure goes and the harder the compressor works, to the point where the poor compressor really has to earn his keep. So with shorter run times, the suction pressures are higher which leads to better efficiency.

This brings us to our second way, namely compressor controls. Knowing that short run times results in higher efficiency, your controls should be set up for shorter, more frequent on-times. Simple as that.

Please let us know how you saved some bucks by raising the suction.

How to save 10 % in refrigeration energy costs

The conventional wisdom is that cooling is responsible for half of the building energy consumption world wide. With the Covid 19 pandemic raging through the world, and killing businesses as it does people, we are all rummaging through our proverbial pockets for spare change.

So how do we save 10%?

Let us be the first to share the secret with you. Mechanical systems, like those who invented them, are lazy. They don’t like working hard. So, all you need to do is to make things a little bit easier for the poor guy. And to do that is fairly simple.

Keep the coils clean – The coils are where heat from the space gets absorbed into the refrigeration gas and from where the heat is rejected to the atmosphere again. If those coils are dirty, the compressor has to work so much harder to get the job done.

Maintain the correct gas levels – If the compressor is the heart of the refrigeration system, then the refrigerant is the blood. And just high and low blood pressure is a bad thing, low and high gas levels are bad too.

These two things can reduce your capacity by between 10% and 20%, so your compressor will have to work that much harder too keep things Cool.

How will the COVID 19 pandemic change refrigeration?

Since the invention of vapour compression based refrigeration, nothing has really changed. Sure, we have a new gas every couple of years, compressors get more efficient and controls are getting more impossible by the day. But what really changed? Other than a couple of extra wrinkles, not much.

Covid 19 is potentially changing the way most businesses are run. More people will be working from home, some say e-commerce will close all the shopping malls, some say it is the end of sport on TV. Many businesses took this opportunity to go digital, and even governments are doing virtual meetings now.

In refrigeration, we are usually quite confident that as long as people need to eat, our industry is safe. But is it? Even the property industry, a safe and mostly profitable industry for many years, is lately feeling the squeeze. No one is safe anymore.

How do we future proof our industry? How do we service our clients if we are not allowed to go anywhere? How do we make sure everything stays Cool, when life really isn’t? And is going digital really all that it is cracked up to be?

We like being connected. It helps us to keep Cool, and it keeps our clients chilled out. Even with the lockdown in full swing, we were chilled, because we could keep an eye from afar.

We have previously written about the internet of things (here and here). At the time, we thought it is merely something Cool. Through this pandemic, we have come conclusion that this absolutely necessary to have even the simplest cold room online. It can simply not be argued anymore that the numbers cannot be justified.

Contact sales@neutronrefrigeration.co.za today and let us keep you cool.

The economics of IOT for Refrigeration

A butchery closed down for the a few days over Christmas. What can go wrong, right?

If you have been keeping things cool for long enough, you will know the fourth law of thermodynamics: When something can go wrong, it will. And when it does, it goes wrong spectacularly.

They had about a ton of value added (read: EXPENSIVE) meat in the cold room and went away for a few days. They had someone swing by the shop every other day to make sure everything is cool, and one morning when the caretaker walked into the shop, she was met at the door with what used to be a ton of value added (read: EXPENSIVE) meat. It turns out they had a tiny leak on the condenser and lost cooling.

A monitoring system would have picked up straight away that things are uncool, and your tech could have been chilling on site long before the value added meat (read: EXPENSIVE) made it to the front door.

But monitoring is so expensive, you say? Bacon retails for about R200/kg. If you save just 25 kg of bacon only once, that’s your system paid off, right there.

So, contact your Leading Expert in Cool today and let us save your bacon.

sales@neutronrefrigeration.co.za

Cold Rooms: How to beat load shedding

From the looks of it, load shedding (rolling blackouts) is not going anywhere in a hurry. In addition to this, the grid infrastructure is aging and taking a pounding whenever the grid is re-energised. Here in Johannesburg, we see transformers failing on a regular basis.When this happens, the outage isn’t just an annoying two or four hours, but it can be out for days.

Whether it’s produce, vaccines or a fresh six pack, we want our stuff to be cool. But with these regular blackouts, you loose cooling, and if you don’t pay attention, you might even pop a compressor. So, how do we do it?

The first and most obvious way, is to fire up the generator. This is easy, doesn’t need major rewiring of your premises, and for a few bucks extra, can start itself when your local utility flicks the switch. The downside is that it is noisy, you have the added hassle of keeping the tank full, and a standard back-up generator needs regular servicing. At the current load shedding frequency, you are likely to reach your 150 or 200 hours in less than 12 months. Backup generators are also not designed for prolonged hours of use and chances are you’ll loose the gennie too.

Another option is to invest in some renewable energy. In the long run, this is a great option, and possibly one of the better investments you can make at the moment. The downside of this is that you need plenty of space.

The other important decision to make, should you opt for renewable backup power, is whether you will go a grid tied, off grid or hybrid type system. This choice will depend entirely on your operation. Off course, we all like to stick it to the Man from time to time, but sometimes you might need the guy.

We recently started working on ways to incorporate thermal storage solutions into our cold rooms. The concept is not new, and it certainly is a much cooler solution for backup energy than batteries and generators. Watch this space for more details.

How is loading shedding stealing your cool? Contact sales@neutronrefrigeration.co.za today for some cool load shedding advice.

Rental vs Buy: Which is better?

Literally everything is sold as a service these days, or XAAS as some would say. I mean, your computer software is a monthly subscription, your car has a service plan, you rent your office equipment, your rent your warehouse/office, yet, for some reason, the concept of renting a coldroom seem foreign to most.

Rentals are fully tax deductable. This minimises the tax obligations. Your are also not stuck with a huge VAT bill, instead this is paid monthly.

With flexible finance options and negotiable deposits, the monthly rental amount can be made to suit your business.

With no upfront capital outlay, your working capital remains intact, leaving you with cash to run or grow your business.

Your rental agreement should include a full maintenance plan, including all services, spares and parts, limiting surprises.

Besides, you have a business to run, why would you want to be bothered with cold room? At Neutron, we also include offsite monitoring in our rentals. In this way, we can do what we have to do so that you can do what you do best.

Contact Neutron Refrigeration today for your coldroom or freeze room rental, and be sure of your Cool.