Page 14 - Climate Control News Magazine April 2022

World News
Production increase for natural refrigerants
THE LU-VE GROUP has installed a new pro- duction line at its plant in Limana, Italy specifi- cally for products that use CO2 and propane.
Plans are already underway to install anoth- er line dedicated to the production of machines that use natural refrigerant fluids.
These products, mainly intended for the world of commercial refrigeration and devel- oped through co-design activities with the Group's major partners, are aimed at replacing traditional heat exchangers that use HFC re- frigerants.
LU-VE Group has for several years been pro- moting the replacement of products using high environmental impact refrigerants with prod- ucts that are suitable instead for the use of low GWP refrigerants, in line with F-GAS legisla- tion expected later this year.
The use of a 3/8" diameter tube instead of the traditional 16mm or 12mm size makes these exchangers suitable both for use with refriger- ants that operate at high operating pressures (CO2) and with flammable refrigerants (HC) where it is essential by law to limit the amount of refrigerant charge.
The miniaturisation of the tube diameter is part of a process of optimisation not only for the performance of the exchanger, but for cost.
This has become particularly important as the price of commodities such as copper have reached record levels.
LEFT: LU-VE is expanding production in preparation for new F-Gas legislation expected later this year.
Fresh approach to freezing tuna
BITZER HAS CREATED a new system to freeze tuna at the Chian Chen Fishing Port in Kaohsi- ung, Taiwan.
The project involved local distributor, ETECO, and contracting firm, Aking, and is the first pro- ject in Taiwan ever to incorporate the BITZER Digital Network (BDN).
Other products used for the project included two BITZER ECOLINE reciprocating compres- sors with VARISTEP capacity control and the IQ module.
The system has a total cooling capacity of 70 kW with a room temperature of –55°C in a total room size of over 261 square metres and a height of seven metres. The refrigerants in use are R507A and R23.
The BDN is a digital infrastructure for cus- tomers to keep track of BITZER equipment.
BITZER Hong Kong technical manager, Ste- phen Chan, said it is important to monitor and record compressor operations for food safety.
“If something happened to the freezing sys- tem, all the fresh tuna would spoil. The BDN can monitor everything and we are notified immedi- ately if there are anomalies with the system,” Chan said.
ETECO sales manager, Calvin Hung, said the company had great support from BITZER Hong Kong and the German headquarters which was necessary because they had never used the BDN before.
“Basically, the BDN offers us all the data we need,” he said.
“We chose the IQ module in combination with VARISTEP for this application because we want- ed to maintain the high stage compressor at a constant pressure to be able to handle the differ- ent loads of low stage operation. Plus, we got easy access to the operating conditions using the Bluetooth interface with the BITZER BEST app on our mobile phones.”
The IQ module’s intelligence ensures optimum
operation of the VARISTEP capacity control, which itself enables virtually seamless compres- sor operation with a refrigerating capacity of be- tween 10 and 100 per cent. Furthermore, the IQ module is an ideal and reliable source of data for the BDN. The data from the module is transferred to the BDN through a preconfigured gateway. ✺
The new cooling system has a capacity of 70 kW.
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