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Thread: Ice Rinks

  1. #1
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    Ice Rinks



    Just a little thought, do any of you guys out there work on rink chillers, they are becoming more common here in the UK.
    I predict that we will soon have or own brand of Engineers that work at nothing else.
    What do our American cousins call them?
    Rink Rats?



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    Hi,
    I thought it would be a good idea to post a picture of a Rink Plant, just to let the commercial guys see what a real plant looks like.
    The photo is of a Canadian plant fitted in N. Ireland. In the fore ground can be seen two of the three compressors, in the back ground is the shell and tube chiller complete with a iquid separation vessel on top. The whole skid is 45' long, with the chiller containing just under a 2000lbs of NH3 refrigerant. From memory the plant has an installed capacity of700Kw, with one compressor as standby only.
    Regards. Andy
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    Smile Ice Rink Photo

    Hi,all
    I see a good number of peopl have had a look at the Arena Pack photo.
    No takers for having worked at these plants, maybe the commercial guys are to chicken admit they haven't seen plant like this before
    Regards. Andy

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    Been There - Left Quick - No Tee Shirt

    Hi Andy

    There's two rinks a bit south (120km) from you. I visited the less successful of the two a few years back and I have the photo's but releasing them may be a legal issue. Enough to say that your pic is the cleanest rink pack I ever did see.

    Until they pulled our local rink down it was typical of the time. Two J.E.Halls compressors running on R22 (lots of it). 2 circulating pumps per pack running almost neat glycol through the rink network.

    Compressors were circa 1950 and using 20 to 30 kg of R22 per month. Most had gland problems and dumped oil in a similar way to my old BSA but in a much larger scale say 2-3 lt per day.

    The Glycol pumps were almost porous with fluid popping out everywhere and ice build up running back from the rink surface didn't help the seals. The floor was a mess of oil, glycol and icy condensate.

    What is amazing is that they still worked at all a credit to the original designers.

    To be cost efficient they had to run 18hours a day minimum every day. There was no standby and profits were low, maintenance was on breakdown only. They all knew that the rink would 'dome' eventually.

    As to the rink in the south don't bother popping in the plant room for a sneak peek the Dobermans looked very hungry!
    Derek

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    Cool Rink Systems

    Hi, Derek,
    That rink pack I posted the photo of is quite a tidy example, built and installed by one of our rivals Cimco. I was involved in the comissioning of the plant about two year ago before I started working for Star. Having said the plant was installed two years ago the photo was taken last week.
    Been missing for a few days as I was over at head office in Glasgow, where I obtained a photo of the smallest rink pack I have ever seen, will post some day soon for all to see.
    Nice hearing from you Derek.
    Regards. Andy.

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    used to work for Cimco, just a mechanic, no change of name name, service a rink one day, meat plant next day, then a mcdonalds

    do supermarkets and test chambers now. makes life interesting to do alot of different crap

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    Smile Cimco

    Hi, Shaun
    I only know a couple of guys in Cimco, Russ the over-seas service manager and Mark W the mechanic who set up that rink pack.
    Company seemed OK to me, but then I wasn't working for them.
    Nice to hear from you, I was in the Hamilton area this time three years ago and you were having a heat wave. Hope the weather is not too hot (lot's of calls).
    Regards. Andy

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    Smile Dinky Rink Pack

    Hi, Derek
    I have attached a little rink pack which was under construction whilst I was visiting head office.
    The compressors are two 30Hp bitzers running on R404a with a low pressure receiver and a titanium plated heat exchanger (quite expensive) for the brine that is pumped around the original system, I think the small size is due to the rink being one of those small curling rinks.
    Sorry about the mess as I was saying the unit is just under construction. I hope to have some finished photos of this plant and it's bigger brother which is being built as I speak.
    Regards. Andy
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    I thought maybe I had the smallest rink here. I take care of a "seasonal" rink here in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. I don't have pix, currently, but I promise to get some up soon.

    The rink in question is actually an indoor tennis court that becomes a rink in mid-November through late April. The chiller is a Patterson-Kelly barrel, with a Carlysle 5h60 compressor. Actually, it uses the 60 tons for the rink down season, when it serves its other purpose as a comfort cooling plant for the main hotel.

    The rink requires 31.5 tons of refrigeration!

    That's right, isolation valves, and two sets of controls. Summer, the barrel's at 41ºF, and winter, it's at 9ºF!

    A guy takes out the garden hose, sprays down the floor, then they have a miniature zamboni that they drive out of an attached shed, built just for the zamboni!

    Takes about four hours to change over.

    It's been up and running nearly forty years, now.

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    I've been doing some ice rinks for about 5 years now. My company builds the refrigeration portion and another installs it. The majority of the racks use R-22 and a shell in tube chiller barrel cooling 40% Ethylene Glycol. We've built some flooded units also with R-22 and R-507. Typical packages range is tonnage from 24.1 to 212 tons.

    Norty

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    Hi, Norty
    nice to hear from you. I notice your company does not fit NH3 packs. Most of ours are NH3, except where we have to fit ***** for a safety reasons.
    Keep up the good work, Regards. Andy.

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    It seems in the Midwest US, there isn't a big calling for NH3. I believe to many regulations and too many people are afraid of it. Too bad, since it's better than the *****s we use from an efficiency and cost standpoint. We build supermarket racks too and I haven't had anyone ask for NH3 on that either.

    Norty

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    Hi, Norty
    I know that a few supermarkets in the U.K. went NH3 on wet systems, basically glycol/brine chiller with warm brine off the discharge desuperheaters used for defrosting purposes.

    One of our rival industrial fridge companies fitted a number of these, some of these packages gave a problems on the oil cooling side and were shipped back to our factory for refit.

    We fit some of these wet systems on the chill side in Regional Distribution Centers for a number of the large supermarket chains, again where direct/pumped NH3 would be a safety issue.

    Regards. Andy

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    Hi Andy

    I work for Cimco on the east coast. We do a lot of rink work as well as process refrigeration. Have you seen one of our rink packages that uses a PHE for the chiller?

    I hear that Mycom compressors aren't widely used in the UK, is that so? You will find Mycom machines on most of our recip. packages.

    J.D.

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    Hi, JD,
    nope never seen one yours with a PHE evaporator, but our own use plates with low pressure receivers.
    Mycoms are not that common in the UK, but common in Ireland due to their use by a local contractor.
    Nice to hear from you, regards, Andy

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    Alright Andy
    I used to work for a company that where a dealer for mycoms and I have seen a few with snapped shafts I once went into a plant room and found the drive pulley the other end of the plant room when we had the shafts analysed for metal fatigue we found they were made with scrap steel [Made in Japan] they were an old design that are just speeded up to get more duty out of them that was the recips, I once stripped down a compressor and had it all laid out for a rep in Belguim to come and inspect he spoke very poor english and asked for a big crate and everything got shot in I thought the Japs would teach us something LOL!!!!! they may be better now though???
    Regards Dave

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    The machines that were built for Mycom in Mexico were crap. The only broken Mycom cranks that I've seen were after the crank had been built up and resurfaced in a machine shop. Saw 2 of these fail.

    J.D.

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    Hi,
    the Mycom WB compressors were originally a J E Hall product, when the patent ran out the company in Japan continued making the compressors for Mycom instead. The only differance to look at was an improved valve design, more springs and a few other things. The real differance was the quality of the material. Valve that lasted 20 k hrs now do 10 k and everything just wears a lot quicker.
    I have a site with two Halls recips and a Mycom in a row, all look the same, but the Halls version needs far less parts.
    JE Hall always over engineer their equipment. This is something which can be good for the customer in the long term, but poor if you are trying to sell plant price wise.
    Regards. Andy

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    Re: Ice Rink Photo

    Originally posted by Andy
    Hi,all
    I see a good number of peopl have had a look at the Arena Pack photo.
    No takers for having worked at these plants, maybe the commercial guys are to chicken admit they haven't seen plant like this before
    Regards. Andy
    Just a note here I worked for CIMCO for many years and owned a company that did rinks all over the us and Canada I have many pictures hope to see more.

    Wes Maxfield CM
    Wes Maxfield

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    Re: Ice Rink Photo

    Originally posted by Andy
    Hi,all
    I see a good number of peopl have had a look at the Arena Pack photo.
    No takers for having worked at these plants, maybe the commercial guys are to chicken admit they haven't seen plant like this before
    Regards. Andy
    Just a note here I worked for CIMCO for many years and owned a company that did rinks all over the us and Canada I have many pictures hope to see more.

    Wes Maxfield CM
    Wes Maxfield

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    Re: Ice Rink Photo

    Originally posted by Andy
    Hi,all
    I see a good number of peopl have had a look at the Arena Pack photo.
    No takers for having worked at these plants, maybe the commercial guys are to chicken admit they haven't seen plant like this before
    Regards. Andy
    Just a note here I worked for CIMCO for many years and owned a company that did rinks all over the us and Canada I have many pictures hope to see more.

    Wes Maxfield CM
    Wes Maxfield

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    Hi Wes, nice to hear from you.
    Was it Cimco you worked for or Toromont, they work out of Alberta don't they
    Regards. Andy

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    Originally posted by Andy
    Hi Wes, nice to hear from you.
    Was it Cimco you worked for or Toromont, they work out of Alberta don't they
    Regards. Andy
    Here in Alberta Tormont works only on Gas Compression not refrigeration , and CIMCO only works on the refrigeration although they both will have an office in the same city, and I only worked on refrigeration and rinks with some liquification packs
    most of the N2 is now done without mechical refrigeration.
    Rinks was my first love.

    Wes Maxfield CM
    Wes Maxfield

  24. #24
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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hi Andy,

    I am service and installation manager for a rink builder. Our approach to rink refrigeration is small horsepower compressors staged at 1 degree intervals. Using a dual circuit system gives redundancy(basically two complete refrigeration systems on one frame). ***** is the refrigerant of choice, although we also do the occasional ammonia system if the customer really wants it. ***** and Glycol have more than enough capacity without all the risks of ammonia. The system cost is also more reasonable with ***** being easier to install. A large ammonia leak in an ice rink with children in the facility would be a public relations nightmare.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    A large ammonia leak in an ice rink with children in the facility would be a public relations nightmare.

    The only ice rink system I've seen had the ammonia in the plant room and the rink served by a secondary refrigerant. Do they actually send ammonia directly to the rink?

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    There are a number of direct rinks still out there but i believe that r-22 was primarily used. We are using Calcium Chloride as the secondary refrigerant in the Ammonia system. Ethylene Glycol is usually used in the ***** systems.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Ice rinks are not so popular around here, but we have done a couple that have been working for over 25 years. They have NH3 piston compressors, flooded chillers, and use calcium chloride as secondary coolant.
    --------------
    Manuel Camacho
    Dartford, England

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hi mcamacho
    ice rink technology is tried and tested, the controls maybe a little bit more involved, and the refrigerant charges a little smaller, but the plants are basically similar.
    Screw compressors were being used, but piston compressors give a good life cycle on rink chiller, so why pay the extra for a machine that has poor part load effeciency
    Kind Regards. Andy.

  29. #29
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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Here are some pictures of a clean installation. Notice the heat exchanger in the left back corner. This is for quick melting the floor for fast turn around of the facility from ice events to events that require the removal of the ice slab. The heat exchanger uses glycol from the boilers to heat the glycol in the floor. After about an hour the ice separates from the concrete and can be broke up and pushed into the melting pit. This facility seats just short of 7000 people.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Quote Originally Posted by Andy
    Screw compressors were being used, but piston compressors give a good life cycle on rink chiller, so why pay the extra for a machine that has poor part load effeciency
    Kind Regards. Andy.
    Well, this is one of those issues where "it depends". If you rely on capacity control on VFDs on screw compressors, then efficiency would be as good, or even better, than recips. Partially loaded recips suffer of secondary mechanical stresses due to unbalanced forces. If any compressor is partially loaded most of the time, then it is a fault on system design or requirements specification.

    We have ammonia screw compressors with 77000 working hours, with almost no maintenance, i.e. only oil replacement and one shaft seal replacement. So, from maintenance standpoint, costs have been comparatively low regarding recips. And if you ask me if I preffer overhauling a 16 piston compressor or changing the roller bearings of an screw compressor , what can I say?
    --------------
    Manuel Camacho
    Dartford, England

  31. #31
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    Re: Ice Rinks

    I personally have had no more than 8 piston compressors on a rink skid. Smaller size with more compressors are easier to control, and provide better effeciency. Rather than one or two large compressors to handle the entire load.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hi
    nothing wrong with screws, good reliable plant, especially if you inspect them ever year or so and check the thrust bearing play, a renew the thrust bearings as required. Main bearings are seldom replaced, except in the smaller machines that use rooler mains. VSD control can give effeciencies near to that of a well designed piston plant, with say two or three run compressors and one for flooding/standby.
    Where pistons have the edge is in the regular servicing they require, giving you the contractor steady work and the customer the reassurance that nothing is being over looked, that say would happen on a screw plant that is only looked at once or twice a year.
    Anyway that is only my opinion, screws and recips are mainly fitted by what is current at the time.
    Kind Regards. Andy

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    The Mighty Ducks iceplant for Anaheim Pond Ca, consists of a dual circuit glycol chiller TXV, 2 100 hp Vilter recips on VFD, one of the only times ive seen a drive applied this way , wonder if anyone else has ? regards

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Quote Originally Posted by frank
    The only ice rink system I've seen had the ammonia in the plant room and the rink served by a secondary refrigerant. Do they actually send ammonia directly to the rink?
    Direct recirculated rinks were built in Canada many years ago. these were mainly outdoor facilities. This method is still used for large outdoor surfaces (luge & bobsled runs)
    We are building ammonia/Cacl2 systems using Plate heat exchangers. the advantages of close approach temperatures and low charge far outweigh the higher first cost when compared to shell and tube chillers.
    A typical 250 to 300 kW system only contains 75 kg of ammonia.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Here in Canada we have hundreds of NH3 rinks from 6 sheets of curling to 8 arens on one plant NH3 is the preferred refrigerant now 10 years ago it was R22 now R22 is on the way out back to NH3.
    wesmax
    Wes Maxfield

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hi
    In Russia artificial ice rinks are getting very popular nowadays. New indoor ice rink was opened in Moscow several months ago. It includes speed skating track & standart ice hockey field. Total ref. capacity around 1250kW. Refrigerant - R-22, secondary coolant - FREEZIUM, 2 flooded type industrial chillers with dry coolers. But when i offer chiller for ice rink i prefer to use Bitzer screws, in this case price will be more reasonable.:-)

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    I've been told that the Moscow region government has banned R-717. As a result My company is building R-22 plants for ice rinks. Do you know if there is there is any move coming to reverse this ban and follow the rest of the world in the use of Ammonia for this application?

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    well in these days with all the new gas around I think NH3 is the best for larger systems.
    wesmax
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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hi Charlie
    I think that in near future situation will not improve. Of course you can install NH3 equipment in Moscow (not in the downtown) but it will cost you a lot of money -because you project must be checked, approved & etc. That`s the reason why most of customers want to use R-22 or R-404A.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU SAY NO NH3 IN DOWNTOWN IT IS DONE IN MANY MANY PLACES WITH ARENAS PACKING PLANTS LARGE MEAT AND CHICKEN PLANTS IN ALL MAJOUR CITIES IN CANADA.
    wesmax
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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Because almost all food processing plants which located in Moscow are very old and have got very old equipment.
    For example - several years ago i worked on beer plant (i made service for ref. equipment). It was open system with NH3 and CaCl as a brine. NH3 capacity was around 15t. All eqiupment and pipes were very old. I still rembber opposite piston compressor which was produced in 1938 - real rare thing. This plant is located near dwelling houses (distance around 20m.).
    Most of customers can`t afford to install new NH3 equipment and prefer to install several small units with R-22 or R404A (one cold room - one unit) because this solution is cheaper & easy in service.

    P.S. Russian refrigeration market a little bit strange

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Russian Refrigeration market is more than a little bit strange. We've been shipping R-22 systems to Moscow recently & I expect to build another soon with 2000 kg of R-22. I know this isn't a good technical desision but I've been told that the ban on Ammonia is a political decision. It was based on the fear ,I guess, of those old 1938 systems which could fail at any time.
    If there's a way to get NH3 into a new recreation facility I'd love to know about it.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hi Guys.

    I currently want to create a 'mini rink within my shop to allow customers to try thier skates out after been sharpened.
    Im looking a sheet of ice size around a 3m x 3m surface.
    I've only got a 230v ac supply in the shop.
    I know i could use plastic piping for the headers and main pipes, but can you recommend a little compact chiller unit or something similar that i could use.
    Do the chillers from beer coolers work etc.
    Any ideas will be great.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Hey Andy hows it going? I work for Cimco in New Brunswick, Canada. 90 % of my work is on ice rinks and curling rinks. I work on alot of rink packs just like your picture. Most of them are nh3 systems using several Mycom recips. Some use flooded chiller others use heat exchanger with surge drum all of them use brine mixture as secondary refrigerant some of the smaller curling rinks have r22 package system. These systems are so common where im from ,i service approx. 40 rinks. I could get tons of pictures but will have to ask permission first.Would be pleased to answer any questions.

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    Re: Ice Rinks

    Worked for Cimco in Toronto 1975 to 1978. Provincial lottery was funding rinks in every little town, places with a population of 500 or so got an 8-month rink Formula: (2) little Mycoms plus 16" by 10 or 12-ft S & T Chiller, CaCl2 Brine, evap condenser, remote sump, 20-hp pump, 650 to 750 Usgpm brine flow, 10-deg. F. SET, brine split 20 to 18. Cookie cutter...Did so many then I can still do the bill of material for a complete rink by memory, only variables were the electrical source, the floor thickness and construction, the location of the condenser and the brine pipe run...

    City of Toronto and others had municipal code that called for every rink to be steel floor, direct refrigerant circulation, no secondary fluids. Maple Leaf Gardens was that way at the time, had been since the 1930's and was not a building where 17000 people could escape with any expedience.

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