Cognis Australia’s Hutt Lagoon Site located near Port Gregory, 600km North of Perth is considered to be the largest algae farm in the world. Located in the middle of approximately 3000 hectares of salt lakes, the farm harvests and recovers natural beta-carotene and other carotenoids and also purifies, refines and concentrates the harvest to create a higher grade product. The site is TGA-GMP licensed and is environmentally sustainable with processes that utilise no petrochemical solvents.
With temperatures regularly reaching over 40 degrees Celsius and high levels of humidity, maintaining the correct running temperature of -18 degrees to keep the brine shrimp frozen used to be particularly challenging. Faced with extreme environmental conditions, Cognis needed a chiller unit to replace the existing one which had failed to withstand the demands of the highly corrosive West Australian location. The company needed a reliable and sturdy chiller with a design proven to operate in challenging conditions. Summit Matsu Chilling Systems; with over 45 year’s industry experience manufacturing chillers for the Australian environment were able to create a chiller for Cognis that operated reliably in even the toughest corrosive environments.
The 125kW air cooled chiller features twin Refcomp reciprocating refrigeration compressors and is used to keep the 20 foot reefer container in which the frozen brine shrimp are kept at a constant running temperature of -18 degrees Celsius. Whilst the high air borne salt levels mean that the exterior of the chiller equipment often becomes encrusted with highly corrosive salt residue, Con Mees from the Hutt Lagoon Site confirmed that the chiller was running smoothly and “showed no signs of wanting to break down”. In an industry where a chiller failure could mean the loss of large harvests of the tiny brine shrimp, having a reliable and durable chiller is of vital importance.
Summit Matsu Chilling Systems design and manufacture their chillers in Australia. Operating out of Alexandria in Sydney, the company have had extensive experience in catering for the needs of companies with difficult locations and Australia’s challenging environmental demands in addition to their standard catalogue range. By refining their chiller unit designs and using only the highest quality parts, Summit Matsu creates the most reliable chillers in the market.
For more information on water chilling systems, visit Matsu Chilling Systems