President Hyper store is the biggest project taken on by Matador Refrigeration, a solution provider for supermarket and retail industry commercial and industrial refrigeration, in their 57-year history and includes the biggest R134a/ CO2 cascade system in Southern Africa.
The store in Vanderbijlpark has a substantial sales and trading floor of approximately 10,000 m2, including a special drying room capable of producing three tonnes of biltong (a popular dried meat product) daily. To meet the needs, the refrigeration system has a total load of 1313.4 kW on the medium temperature applications and 162 kW on the low temperature systems.
President Hyper called on Matador to design and install the CO2 cascade system, focusing on energy savings and environmental responsibility for its customers.
Through creative engineering and Matador’s own Variable Speed Drives installed on each compressor system, Matador was able to reduce the running consumption from the estimated 1400 Amps per phase to an average of 870 Amps in peak summer conditions, with the lowest recorded at 550 Amps.
To keep the components within the system running smoothly, Matador turned to CAREL, having worked together in the country for over five years. The system controls used in the store manage each application in terms of temperature, defrosting, alarms, and overall system operation functions.
“It has been really challenging for the companies involved, mostly on the power consumption side due to South African load shedding for protecting electricity power systems,” said Nicola Pieretti, Application Specialist for CAREL.
For both Matador and CAREL, the subcritical CO2 solutions have been the way forward for natural refrigerants in terms of energy savings and cost, though the future could lie with transcritical solutions. Matador has to date installed more than fifty systems in South Africa using natural refrigerants, with CAREL technology used in all of the CO2 stores.
“I think in time, people will realise that it is their responsibility to do the right thing in terms of the environment and the benefits in efficiency and energy saving,” said Grant Ford, Engineering Director at Matador. “We do believe that the change to natural refrigerants will be driven forward by continued pressure from governments, supply chains and the influence of Europe and America.”
