Cooling Rubbish

[airefresco]

I have been given a strange project to work on. I client of ours (a large hotel complex) have a compound where all the rubbish bins are kept. Obviously, the area stinks, especially in the summer time when ambient temperatures here can reach 50ºC. Basically, the plan is to chill the area to slow down or stop bacterial growth. Which, in theory, should stop the area smelling so badly.

The thing I don´t know is how cool to design the room to. I´m thinking 12ºC should be enough. What do you guys think?

thanks,
paul..

[Argus]

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Sounds like spending a fiver to save a quid to me.

Why not get rid of the rubbish - or am I missing something?

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[airefresco]

The rubbish is collected three times a weeks. I'm not talking a of a couple of rubbish bins, this is like 4 or 5 huge skips plus recycling bins. There are 400+ rooms in the hotel, a huge restaurant, kitchens, etc, So theres alot of rubbish in there on a daily basis. Add to that the to the high ambient temperatures, it doesn't take long for it to start to smell.

paul..

[frank]

Cooling it down to 12C will cost a lot of Euros in energy consumption.
Also, I would guess that you would be taking the air below dew point so you may end up with condensation problems.
I would suggest that a dedicated extract ventilation system would do the job if it's designed for a high air change rate, say 20 - 30 per hour, with fresh air make up. That way, the smells should not have time to build up and cause a nuisance.

[US Iceman]

I think Frank is onto the least expensive solution. If you can highly ventilate the space and discharge the air up using high velocity fans this might offer decent results.

[chillin out]

Chilling the room will only dampen the smell to a bearable condition, but the rats will still smell it.

Changing the air in the room will only spread the smell around the neighborhood which will attract ever rat withing 7miles.

How about a very simple solution...
All rubbish must be bagged and sealed before it goes into the skip.
Or get some sort of super duper industrial one that fits the skip which you can seal up when full.

No smells and not rats, even the bin men will thank you.

Chillin:):)

[airefresco]

Thanks for the reply guys.

To be honest when I was first given this project, I thought it was stupid idea. Someone from a different company suggested it to the client and has already quoted to do it. We were asked to supply a quote.

Ventilation isn't going to work, as chillin out said, it will make the whole complex stink.

One solution I have thought of its to install the system as before and install a heat reclaim unit, to reclaim the waste heat from the condenser to heat the water for the kitchen. Effectively I would then have waste cooling, which could be used to cool the rubbish area.

We are due start a project on this site later on in the year installing a couple of chillers and utilising these heat reclaim units with them, so it would be a good experiment to test with this project.

Is this a better idea?

paul..

[chillin out]

I would watch out for 'fin rot'. The rubbish could rot through the evaporator causing premature failure.
Plus, all the smells will collect on the coil causing a huge amount of bacteria to grow. Chilled or not it will be a massive growth on the coil.

Chillin:):)

[airefresco]

yeah, I'd thought of that too. I think we will have to do a maintenance visit at least once a month to clean the coils.

[Argus]

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It's up for this years 'Golden Bollock' awards for hare-brained ideas.


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[Brian_UK]

Why not sell them an incinerator that will generate electricity from the waste heat ?

[completehvac]

This is normal practise in my experience of working in large resturants in london. Usually just a split set at about 21C is sufficient.

[airefresco]

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It's up for this years 'Golden Bollock' awards for hare-brained ideas.


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Why exactly? They will get government money to pay for it, as it is a energy reductions concept. They will reduce or stop the smells from the bins and they get hot water for the kitchens much cheaper then what they pay now.

I don´t think a split will do the job, as the fin spacing is to close, and we will have problems the evaporator/indoor unit.

EDIT: Just looked into the incinerator idea. I don´t think that it is possible due to the CO2 emissions. Currently they have huge gas boilers exclusively for hot water. Their gas bill is over 8000€ a week!!! The project i mentioned earlier in this thread for installing the chillers is aimed at reducing this bill dramatically and reducing their carbon footprint. This system could be the first phase of that project we could use the waste condensate heat to make some hot water.

paul..

[Toolman]

I have been involved in the repair of a large rubbish room at the largest hospital in our state , not sure of the capacities but that room had 2 x 4 fan evaps and a semihermetic system , temp was probably 5 Deg C and it worked well as is was down for a week before we repaired it and it stunk !! After 2 days of being repaired it didnt smell at all , so forget ventilation just get that room temp down the colder the better , who cares about condensation or " dew point " that will only happen when its hauled away .

Great idea heating water with discharge .