SINDELFINGEN, Germany; BEIJING, China, 16 September 2021: June 19, 2021 marked the milestone of one billion doses of vaccinations against COVID-19 in China, contributing to the global fight against the pandemic, Bitzer said. The company said it contributed to the success by providing BITZER products, which ensure the stability of the production and storage of vaccines against COVID-19.

Photographs courtesy BITZER

Most vaccines are extremely sensitive to temperature, which means a strict cold chain storage is required between production and vaccination sites, BITZER said. In order to ensure the quality of the vaccines as well as their safety and effectiveness, special regulations are made for vaccine storage and transportation, like storage at a temperature of between 2 degrees C and 8 degrees C, in this case, the company said. For any effective vaccine, the safety during storage and transportation is as important as safety during production, it added.

BITZER said that BITZER China recently provided 12 CSH7593 screw compressors with mechanical capacity control to a vaccine manufacturer in Beijing for the storage of inactivated COVID-19 vaccines. The elevated three-dimensional storage facility measured over 46,000 cubic metres in volume and 16 metres in height, which is currently the largest domestic inactivated COVID-19 vaccine storage facility with the highest clear height and the most accurate temperature monitoring in China, the company said. In two central storage rooms, the involved BITZER CSH7593 screw compressors effectively ensure that the temperature of the vaccine storage is kept within the specified range of between 2 degrees C and 8 degrees C with a total cooling capacity of 1,140 kW, the company claimed.  

A look behind the scenes of the inactivated COVID-19 vaccines storage in Beijing

The company said that with its screw compressors and air supply technology, the project can break through the traditional air supply method. As a result, the overall temperature difference of the cold storage can be controlled within the range of 0.5 degrees C and 1 degrees C at a minimum partial load of 50%. In the installation process, the mobile refrigeration stations of partners are adopted as a whole, where the integrated skids enable a modularised, standardised and simplified system design, greatly shortening the construction time of the refrigeration system with a 30% space saving and a 45% noise reduction, the company said. Out of the four skids with three compressors each, each skid runs in an own refrigeration circuit. In the end, the total construction of the project only took 50 days, while the temperature verification was quickly approved and put into operation, the company said.  

By providing 20 reciprocating compressors and 12 screw compressors through its partners, BITZER China also contributed to a capacity expansion project of the Sinopharm Wuhan Institute of Biological Products in the megacity of Wuhan, BITZER said. The project is located in Jingang Industrial Park, Jiangxia District, with a total construction area of 141,000 square metres. The cold storage for inactivated COVID-19 vaccine storage after production is an important part of the project, with a volume of nearly 20,000 cubic metres, the company said. After the project is completed, the annual production capacity will reach one billion doses of vaccines against COVID-19, the company added.