Medhurst Winery Employs Energy Saving Design
*Extract from The Australian & New Zealand Grapegrower & Winemaker February 2011-issue Medhurst Wines 2011 vintage will be the first in its new winery. Winemaker Matt Steel shares the design concepts and process, with a particular focus on the new refrigeration system. Key Features For the RefrigerationSteel said he and the architects investigated using geothermal refrigeration for the project but it couldn't meet the capacity required for the ultimate winery design size, which is for 250 tonnes of fruit. In the end, the refrigeration system was designed with consultation from Linney Engineering, who are winery design engineers and ISECO, refrigeration engineers with wine industry expertise. Steel said the key elements of the refrigeration design include the barrel hall design, which provide low temperature differential and low air speed air handling units to maximise ambient humidity. "There's also a cool room that can chill hand picked fruit from 28degC to 10degC in 18 hours," he said. "This is a key requirement for quality of Medhurst wines , particularly with harvest dates moving forward into February,causing harvest fruit temperatures to be warmer than ideal." "The main Chiller set has a heat recovery circuit that will be used to pre-heat water to 50degC for use in the winery." The system has a large brine capacity which acts as a heat store and its control is linked to the VinWizard system so that any components (cool Room, barrel hall, individual tanks, chiller set) or the whole system can be programmed to run during off-peak, reducing power costs and increasing exchange efficiency, he said. The refrigeration system utilizes an aircooled Australian Fluid Chillers chiller set with R507 refrigerant. Click here to download the complete article. For further information contact ISECO. |