Watts Sylax - Keeping cheese chilled

Overview

Orchard Refrigeration contacted Watts to discuss the challenges they were facing while managing the chilling processes for a large cheese storage facility in Northern Ireland.

Accurate temperature control and safe chilling environments are an essential part of the food and drink industry. Orchard Refrigeration currently has 300 butterfly valves installed across three factory locations on a single site in Craigavon.

Detailed Description

This large industrial site is responsible for fresh food and dairy and it is the chilling side of the site that has provided this unusual challenge. At Watts we pride ourselves on manufacturing high quality components and we were both surprised and disappointed when Orchard Refrigeration reported unexpected failures on a small percentage of the butterfly valves that that have installed on site.

The Watts team responded quickly to investigate these rare failures to reassure the customer and identify the cause. After careful analysis it was discovered that the source of the failures is the volume of chiller cycles being run daily. At their peak, there were more than 700 cycles running per day which were directly shortening the lifespan of the installed butterfly valves. This means that based on butterfly valves durability performance, the installed valves are not failing early, they are working within, and often exceeding their normal lifespan of cycles.

James Turner, National Key Account Manager for Watts explains: “Once the SOCLA team identified the cycles as the source of these unexpected failures, we were able to work with Orchard Refrigeration to deliver a tailored solution.

Our proposal to improve the lifespan on this hard-working site is to change the valve disc designed to accommodate the working pressure of the chillers.

Watts has now supplied new, lower pressure discs for the valves that have been rigorously tested by the customer on site and these are extending the life of the valves. The new discs will be rolled out across the site ensuring that this factory now has a truly bespoke solution to its chilling challenges.”