With 50 m3 during the night, the production manager can relax, according to Geneglace.
Fifty tonnes of ice per day is what the new Geneglace F2000 produces, which make it the largest flake-ice making machine in the world, according to the company.
Fifty tones per day of dry and sub-cooled ice, this means 4825 kWh of refrigeration available for immediate chilling. With a large exchange surface, the flake-ice very rapidly releases its refrigeration potential and maintains products at 0°C.
Unit sold in Japan
The prototype was tested last summer in the greatest secrecy at the Nantes plant. The F2000 was then sent by boat to Japan to continue trials on the site of the company Heart Lei, which is already a purchaser for an undisclosed amount. It will be the major part in an all-weather snow gun which will cover the Utopia Saïoto ski resort with snow from November onwards.
Launch at IKK
More information on this Jumbo model was provided during the IKK International Refrigeration Show, held in Hanover in October, Geneglace having reserved the information scoop for professionals and its international distribution network.
The cylinder measuring 3 metres for a diameter of 2.45 m, weighs about 5 tonnes.
A well-manageddevelopment
"It was a rather mad wager", explains Loïc Bretin, the project leader. "We accumulated technical constraints both in its design and its production. The specifications were complicated. The heat exchanger had to be not only effective with all modern refrigerants, R404A, R507, R22, R717, but it also had to respond to the requirements of the main codes governing the manufacture of pressure vessels, such as the ASME (in North America), the A.D. Merkblätter (in Germany), the CODAP (in France), the ISPESL (in Italy), etc."
"We selected materials and thicknesses guaranteeing the safety and long-life of the installation, while remaining at the limit of the constraints which could be imposed on the manufacturing tools for this welding assembly.
The series of trials involved intense work, with quite a number of incidents, to finally exceed the objective of 50 tonnes in 24 hours on the same day that the Japanese customer arrived at the factory.
The Geneglace team put a lot of effort into this project, but they were well supported by our customers who believed in it even more than we did."
Modern applications
For a long time now, the Geneglace distributors wanted this product. Of course, the requirements of the fishing sector are not increasing.
The trend is even towards down sizing. But a large number of industrial processes consume substantial quantities of flake-ice.
This is the case for the manufacturing of dyes - where Geneglace supplies major groups such as BAYER, BASF or CLARIENT, for pharmaceuticals (SANDOZ) and for concrete cooling (BOUYGUES).
The latest breakthroughs come from Japan where Geneglace took orders for the nuclear industry, artificial snow production and even the automotive industry.
A high-performance andproven technology
The F2000 went back to the same design as the other 30 models of flake ice makers in the Geneglace range. This is the result of experimentation and specialisation over 50 years in the technology used in machines for making flake-ice.
The design is based on a fixed cylinder, with few moving parts, and without sealed bearings.
The incomparable thermal yield by the Geneglace machines results from the choice of materials which combines thermal conductivity and pressure resistance (each machine is tested at 26 bars).
The cylinder's external insulation and the optimisation of the design also increase yield (see illustration, cut-out model).
The greater the daily production, the more this aspect is determining. In fact, the energy cost for a plant producing 50 tonnes per day can range from 200 to 1000 Euro per day, depending on the context. Hence, the good energy yield will allow substantial cost savings for many years.
From this point of view, the F2000 has established records. It is for this reason that some major groups are already interested in this machine for thermal storage, an operation which consists in storing energy in the form of ice produced at a low cost during the night to restore it during the day, for instance as air conditioning.
Thermal engineers like production managers can rest assured the icebox will not overflow during their absence. For some tens of euro, Geneglace proposes ice level detectors, remote controls and electronic clocks to automate the operation.
