Düsseldorf, Germany, 9 October 2018: The British Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Magazine (RAC) has awarded GEA with this year’s RAC Cooling Industry Award, in the category ‘Building Energy Project’, the company said, in a Press communiqué. The award honours companies that are particularly committed to environmentally friendly and innovative solutions in the refrigeration and air conditioning industry, the communiqué said. The award was presented to GEA at a ceremony held at the end of September, at the Hilton Hotel, London, attended by over 600 representatives of the refrigeration and air-conditioning industry, the communiqué further said. In total, there were awards in 19 categories, covering the entire field of refrigeration and air conditioning, from retail trade projects to cold chain innovations, the communiqué added.

According to GEA, the jury chose it as the winner of the grand prize because its project is a prime example of innovation and significant energy savings. The evaluation committee was convinced by the conversion of an ammonia-based refrigeration plant to heat a large quantity of cleaning water from the customer Moy Park, the communiqué said. Moy Park is the largest poultry meat producer in Northern Ireland, also produces poultry in England and is one of the 15 largest food companies in the UK, the communiqué further said.

A member of the jury of the RAC Cooling Industry Awards, said: “This project was based on an analysis of Moy Park’s equipment and environmental requirements study. GEA delivered a perfectly worked-out solution that exceeded the customer’s expectations. The old, existing system was retained, but modified with the GEA solution. This is how these results, measurable in terms of evaluation figures, came about.”

According to GEA, its solution involved using a 1.5 MW booster compressor as a booster heat pump, which recompressed the exhaust gases, thus, making it possible to heat the water to 67 degrees C.  The communiqué said that Moy Park was able to completely shut down two boilers and reduce the gas consumption of the other two, while electricity consumption increased only slightly.