Ice and frost formation in cold stores and air locks used by the food industry often cause familiar but unwelcome problems. Ice build up on floors in air locks and around cold store entrances slow down loading and unloading operations, as fork trucks have to travel carefully across icy floors. Employees can slip and fall, leading to costly injuries.
Condensation also causes fog around doorways, blinding strip curtains and obstructing views in traffic ways. Apart from these safety issues, ice build up also causes operational difficulties such as preventing the free operation of cold store and air lock doors, stopping them from sealing properly, or in extreme circumstances even lifting them out of their runners. To keep things running smoothly requires a team of people to regularly chip away the ice by hand, an uncomfortable, dangerous and time consuming job. The ice build up also affects the efficiency of the refrigeration system, increasing defrost cycles and degrading temperature control.
So how does Munters make these concerns a thing of the past? It is necessary to consider the cause of the problem, which is the moisture in the air. All air holds water, warm air holds more water than cold air. This is why water condenses on cold surfaces, and forms ice and frost. Munters' solution is to tackle the cause of the problem by removing the moisture from the air, so it can't condense and form ice on floors or walls in cold stores or air locks. Keeping the floors and doors dry and ice-free provides many benefits. For example, with a dry and ice-free environment, fork trucks and personnel can operate at their normal speed, and doors operate freely and correctly. These improvements reduce maintenance costs, down time, and speeds up loading and unloading time, increasing efficiency and throughput.
Safety issues are also resolved. Having a dry working area means a safer working area, with no ice to slip on. Also, no ice on strip curtains or fog around door entrances means visibility is improved. There are benefits in running costs too. By removing the moisture that would normally condense on evaporating coils means that the coils run more efficiently and can run much longer between defrosts. So how does the Munters system work? Since the problem is humid air infiltrating into the air locks and cold store through dock doors, the Munters unit captures this humid air above the doors, and removes this moisture load before it can drift further into the area and condense out on the cold surfaces.
The humid air is passed through the Munters dehumidifier where the moisture is removed and very dry air is then returned to the area, flowing across the cold store doors and floors, at the rear of the loading dock, providing the driest air to the coldest surfaces. This dry air keeps these surfaces free of ice build up and rapidly removes any condensation which might form during peak working periods.