The installation of computer-controlled variable speed drives on refrigeration plant compressors has enabled Swire Cold Storage to reduce its energy consumption by more than 15 per cent during the cooler months.
The reduction has been achieved between April and September after the drives were installed at the company’s Lurnea warehouse in Sydney.
Swire Cold Storage is one of Australia’s leading refrigerated warehouse providers with a fleet of 220-plus vehicles and 17 facilities occupying 73 million cubic feet with 326,000 pallet spaces.
Swire’s general manager of engineering services, Sam Czyczelis, has been with the company since the late 1980s and knows just about everything there is to know about industrial refrigeration systems.
Czyczelis said applying the new variable speed drive technology to the large rotary screw compressors at the Lurnea warehouse has made a real difference.
The warehouse provides blast-freezing services and refrigerated warehousing to some of the largest vegetable processors and poultry producers in Australia.
While Czyczelis was confident the solution would work he had to create a compelling business case to justify the capital expenditure.
He relied on an energy saver industrial refrigeration audit undertaken in
September 2010. The cost of the audit was subsidised by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH).
In fact the OEH contributed 70 per cent of the total cost of the audit through its Energy Saver program.
“Through the audit, I was able to test my work and justify the substantial amount of capital required to complete the project,” he said.
Czyczelis is responsible for the repair and maintenance of all buildings, plant and equipment across Australia. He said the Lurnea warehouse is relatively new with the building completed in 2009.
“Our large capacity rotary screw compressors work very efficiently during the warmer months but don’t perform at their best between April and September, when they are required to move lower volumes of gas at low load periods,” Czyczelis said.
“The variable speed drives have resolved this problem and will pay for themselves in just over four and a half years.”
As a member of the energy efficiency committee of the Refrigerated Warehouse and Transport Association of Australia, Czyczelis has actively promoted the OEH Energy Saver program to other operators.
“I’d highly recommend the audit to other cold storage companies; in our case it reduced our electricity consumption by an annual 786 mega watt hours,” he said.
“Following on from the success of the Lurnea project we are looking to implement similar initiatives in some of our other warehouses in Australia.”
Overall, Swire’s has cut its carbon output in Australia by 40 per cent over a three
year period.This initiative has reduced the Lurnea plant’s carbon emissions by a further 840 tonnes per annum.
Swire's staging area
