Storing ice?

[paul_h]

I have to play a refrig engineer for reals now.
It's a job for a friend who just started working for a bagged ice seller, and the owner of the company just bought the business too and doesn't know much about this freezer room.
Long story short, condensing unit is a Lovelock Luke F26-120A open drive system. Compressor is a 3VT-M
(Is that a Dorin? Never seen a Dorin).
Actual evap coil is missing, all pipes cut.
The system orginally was on R502, looks like it was changed to R408a, but then the system shut down and pipes cut probably because of shaft seal leaks.

Room is 4mx5mx2m, but I don't even no what temp it would have run at, maybe -10°C? I don't see any reason for ice to be stored any colder.

I guess I have to work out if the compressor is repaible or eonomically viable, or parts are available from heatcraft.
Is it worth keeping an old open drive compressor going anyway? Any idea of what capacity that condensing unit is?

[chemi-cool]

Hi Paul,

The bottom line of your post is that you have an insulated room with a few old parts that you want to use as a freezer.

There was a paper from heatcraft called engineering manual here which have all you need. If you cant find it here, PM me your email and I will send it to you.

I would not waist a moment on that old stuff.

[Peter_1]

You need the capacity of the compressor, not the condensing unit.
We have a customer with a rather big flake ice storage (+/- 12 x 12 x 6 m) (36 x 36 x 18 ft)
We maintain the room at -5°C.
You probably had the problems due to the retrofit but you couldn't avoid this without replacing all the gaskets.
Go for a semi-hermetic machine, evaporating at -10°C to -13°c and calculate your condenser to condense as low as possible (10 °C higher then highest ambient)
Maybe yo can use the old condenser if it's still OK.

[paul_h]

You need the capacity of the compressor, not the condensing unit. I thought capacity depended on motor speed, pulley size, condenser size, that's why I asked for the condensing unit capacity.
I haven't worked with open drives for more than 10 years though.

You probably had the problems due to the retrofit but you couldn't avoid this without replacing all the gaskets.Yeah, I know all about that :D That's why I suspect major problems with the shaft seal. The only time I worked on open drives a long time ago, was when I was updating them all from R12 and R502. So I know all about leaking gaskets and seals, but that's about the only thing I know about them ;)


Go for a semi-hermetic machine, evaporating at -10°C to -13°c and calculate your condenser to condense as low as possible (10 °C higher then highest ambient)
Maybe yo can use the old condenser if it's still OK.
Would I need to go semi hermetic? Doesn't seem like I need anything big enough to be semi hermetic. A medium hermetic condensing unit would do the job.

From my calculations, maintaining -5C with ice brought in already frozen, in a 4" thick polystyrene panel room (inc ceiling and floor), 5mx3.5mx2m big would only need 2.6kW.
Am I way off?

edit: Anyone know what capacity the old open drive compressor/condensing unit is anyway?

[Peter_1]

On this link you will find the capacity sheet of a 3VT
the scanned pdf was too big to post here
http://rapidshare.com/files/224290461/IMG.pdf