Korean poultry processing company SHINWOO FS is harnessing natural refrigerants CO2 and ammonia to help slash carbon dioxide emissions with a new heat recovery solution. Built by Dürr thermea, the system takes back heat from the ammonia cooling machine and thereby successfully links heating and cooling processes.
Based in the city of Seosan, poultry processing giant SHINWOO FS boasts a 16,560m2 plant with a processing capacity of up to 15,500 animals per day. The whole production process is highly automated. To comply with strict hygiene standards, very high and very low temperatures are needed for certain process steps.
NH3 cooling, CO2 heating
Machinery and products are cooled with ammonia. The heat generated during the cooling process will in future be reused to produce hot water. The cooling and heating cycles are linked through Dürr thermea’s high temperature heat pump thermeco2 HHR720.
The CO2 heat pump uses the energy coming from the unused heat of the cooling machine to heat other process steps. The optimal thermodynamic properties of CO2 allow particularly high temperature values. With this method, the heat pump is able to heat fresh water from 15°C to up to 90°C.
20m2 of buffer storage is integrated between the NH3 cooling operation and the waste heat, to decouple both functions. Similar buffer storage on the hot water side decouples heat recovery from production.
Environmental and economic benefits
This new system promises to reduce CO2 emissions by 683 tons per year, which equals the annual emissions of 340 regular cars.
SHINWOO FS also installed this new system for economic reasons. The savings in energy and natural gases, which were formerly used for the heating process, allow the system to be amortised within 2.5 years.
In fact, the thermeco2 heat pump has a COP of 4.5 and 78% of its heating performance comes from the cooling cycle’s heat recovery. So, only 22% need to be converted from electrical sources.
Sep 13, 2016, 09:47
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