Originally a sail-making company, the Frisian KMA Group has been active in industrial textiles since 1866. In the last eight years, the Heerenveen-based company has specialized in fire safety. This is how the company ended up in the fresh produce sector via a diversion. Their American distributor of fire extinguishers developed a technology that enabled substantial energy savings in cooling and was looking for a dealer in the European market. Thus, Cold Plus Europe was born.
In the mid-1970s in Lakeland, Florida, brothers Larrell and Dale Willis began developing treatment formulas for PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) for hydraulic, gear, and pneumatic treatments. When tests gave much higher than expected results, it was realized that substantial energy could be saved in cooling. "On the European market, the agent is new, but in the US, Cold-Plus treatments have now been used in more than 14,000 installations," Sicco Huisman says.
Pipeline before and after treatment
Operation
"Every refrigeration or air-conditioning system uses a refrigerant to generate heat and cooling. Oil is also added to this to keep the compressor running smoothly. Over time, however, oil fouling develops in the pipes, causing more resistance in the pipe. We can treat the refrigerant contained in installations, permanently removing the oil fouling and improving thermodynamics (pool boiling). As the boiling point is reached faster, the compressor does not have to run as long, and less energy is needed to reach the desired cooling temperature. This, therefore, leads to a more efficient system with less friction and faster evaporation," Sicco explains.
"As a result, there is less friction and higher efficiency, which saves you around 18% to 27% energy when applied to existing systems that are a few years old, throughout the life of the system. But we even see efficiency improvements of 6% possible on brand new equipment. The great thing is that it is a one-off treatment. In addition, it lowers peak load, and the compressor wears out less quickly, extending its lifetime and reducing maintenance costs. An additional advantage is that it has no impact whatsoever on the SOP (standard operating procedures)."
Product warranty
"While this cooling solution was somewhat outside our field of work, the solution is so interesting that we widened our scope. Indeed, the need is obvious, especially given the grid congestion where capacity needs to be freed up. Cold Plus can certainly contribute to that. The great thing is that the product has already proven itself. There are many test results, and there is also a product guarantee. We assume an ROI of up to one and a half years," says Huisman.
"We are therefore now looking for pilot projects with entrepreneurs who want to save on energy costs. For the fresh produce sectors, energy saving is an important issue, so we see a lot of opportunities in this market. We are the supplier of Cold Plus for the entire European market, but we want to start in our home market. We look forward to being able to contribute to energy saving and CO2 reduction at fresh produce companies with this."
For more information:
Sicco Huisman
Cold-Plus Europe
Hermes 14
8448 CK Heerenveen
Tel: +315 153 313 44
Mob: +316 103 957 26
sicco@cold-plus-europe.com
www.cold-plus-europe.com