UK – Honeywell were the winners of the ACR project of the year as announced at the National ACR & Heat Pumps Awards in Birmingham last night. The award was selected by Maurer, whose decision criteria over the refrigeration system for their new bakery plant combined the ability to not only meet incoming regulations but to implement a strategy that would bear down on energy consumption and enable the company to meet its stated environmental aims.

In greater detail, the project concerned a new factory, which extended the production surface from 2,500m² to a total of 6,000m², included a very large preparation area, 25 cold rooms and four freezer rooms.
Honeywell’s Solstice ze (HFO-1234ze), with a GWP of <1 according to the IPCC 5th review, was matched with CO₂ to create the first such industrial cascade system.

From a technical perspective, bringing Solstice ze and CO₂ together in a single configuration presented challenges because CO₂ is a high capacity, very fast fluid, whereas Solstice ze is slow to reach steady stage because of its lower capacity. In Maurer’s professional opinion this project not only met their specific demands but also has great potential across the food industry.

The specific requirements to qualify for the project, and award, was that the project needed to address the following points; refrigerant safety, low energy consumption, heat recovery for building heating, reliable installation for 20+ years, initial installation costs, qualify for subsidies and deliver a refrigerant “green image”.

The jury also highly commended I-I-Ice Ltd, while the following projects were also finalists: AB Group & EBM Papst – M&S Energy Roll Out, AB Group & EBM Papst – M&S NET, AB Group & EBM Papst – Sainsbury’s Co Refrigeration Assets, AB Group & EBM Papst – M&S Energy Roll Out and Munters – Equinox Data Center.