VSDs reduce duck freezing costs

Related tags Hvac Bird

One of the UK’s largest producers of duck products is set to save £30,000 a year on freezing costs following the introduction of ABB variable-speed drives (VSDs) on its blast chiller application.

Cherry Valley Farms of Lincolnshire rears some 8M ducks every year and processes 45,000 birds a day. Some are prepared as fresh duck products but most are frozen in the company’s 10 blast chiller bays. Each bay has two 4kW motors turning fans that blow air over coils of ammonia to produce a blast of very cold air. A complete day’s production of ducks is usually frozen in around 10h overnight.

Although freezing takes place only on four days a week, the fans need to operate 24h a day every day, as switching the fans off would cause them to ice up. Cherry Valley Farms was keen to investigate anything that would reduce the energy used by the blast chillers.

Solution

The company asked ABB authorised reseller and systems integrator, Inverter Drive Systems (IDS), to come up with a solution.

IDS installed 20 ABB heating, ventilation and air conditioning drives two for each blast chill bay. When in production, the drives run the motors at 45Hz, giving a 25% energy saving during the freezing period. Outside production hours, the motors are slowed further to 30Hz, which produces a 60 – 70% saving when no product is being frozen.

Contact: ABB