Heat recovery from fridge compressors

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
Have looked at this in the past but the economics were marginal
Renewing the elec contract just now & prices are circa 3p kw up on 3 years ago + it seems 1/2 hourly charging will sneak in extra costs.
Anyone got a unit in & got a view on it`s performance
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
We’ve put heat recovery on our snap chiller and getting decent amounts of warm water off it. Going in to the tank at around 55+ degrees so not much electrical input needed to bring it up to 80 deg for plant wash.
Heat off the compressor would on,y go to waste and with rising power costs can only be a saving over time
 

Horn&corn

Member
We did heat recovery on bulk tank compressors few years back. Seemed to make little difference to Elec bill but it helped the dairy engineers retirement fund. Put in a bigger plate cooler recently and that made the milk so cold the compressors now do very little. Big plate cooler and lots of water wins every time!
 

Tullyvernon

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ulster
We did heat recovery on bulk tank compressors few years back. Seemed to make little difference to Elec bill but it helped the dairy engineers retirement fund. Put in a bigger plate cooler recently and that made the milk so cold the compressors now do very little. Big plate cooler and lots of water wins every time!

He mustn't have had big plans for his retirement [emoji23][emoji23]
 

Tullyvernon

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Ulster
The heat recovery is only as good as how you utilize the hot water available, it's all well and good seeing it at 50-60'C'C in the heat recovery but what happens next?

For example a pressurised water heater for the bulk milk tank, it draws off the water from the heat recovery while the tank is washing, then the water sits there for almost 48 hours to the water heater comes on. If you loose 20'C for every 24hours, then you have lost the best part of 40'C

On a farm with demand for hot water a heat recovery will have a very decent pay back, but if it's not plumbed correctly or you don't actually use enough not water to begin with you won't getting return on investment.

A plate cooler isn't an alternative, in my opinion every dairy farm should have BOTH.

But two completely separate systems.
If you NEED more not water it is more efficient to heat the water with HR rather than cool the milk with the plate cooler and heat the water with electricity.
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
We use quite a bit of hot water in the milk bottling shed. Robots need a special valve fitted that allows the boilers to hot fill 3 x day. Need to try & calculate how much we heat
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
The heat recovery is only as good as how you utilize the hot water available, it's all well and good seeing it at 50-60'C'C in the heat recovery but what happens next?

For example a pressurised water heater for the bulk milk tank, it draws off the water from the heat recovery while the tank is washing, then the water sits there for almost 48 hours to the water heater comes on. If you loose 20'C for every 24hours, then you have lost the best part of 40'C

On a farm with demand for hot water a heat recovery will have a very decent pay back, but if it's not plumbed correctly or you don't actually use enough not water to begin with you won't getting return on investment.

A plate cooler isn't an alternative, in my opinion every dairy farm should have BOTH.

But two completely separate systems.
If you NEED more not water it is more efficient to heat the water with HR rather than cool the milk with the plate cooler and heat the water with electricity.

Don't want a pressurised system to make it work best. Our heat recovery has its own thermally insulated tank that transfers to the Cotswold on demand so water entering the Cotswold is at say 55 deg so the heater only has to add another 20 deg or so rather than heating stone cold water off the mains at say 10 deg now or warming it another 70 degs. Easy to see the savings there when the heat would only be wasted otherwise
Should add that we are washing the plant x3 a day now :(
 
Location
Cheshire
Our heatstore "megaflow" is pressurised it feeds 4 functions, plant wash unpressurised, and the tank wash, a hot water heater and a hot tap all pressurised. The water coming out of the heatstore is between 70 and 80C. We don't add heat to the plant wash in the afternoon, its set to come on for the morning just in case we don't have hot water, it won't be doing a lot. Its nice having plenty of hot water without being concerned about the cost.
 
Have looked at this in the past but the economics were marginal
Renewing the elec contract just now & prices are circa 3p kw up on 3 years ago + it seems 1/2 hourly charging will sneak in extra costs.
Anyone got a unit in & got a view on it`s performance

Friend of mine recently installed the xchanger glycol system on 400 cows and is getting a quarterly cheque of 9k in RHI payments and his milk enters the tank at 3 degrees so tank compressor never running, he’s heating his hot water, space heating his workshop and even heating his washdown water [emoji23]

Makes an absolute mockery of the RHI scheme but its all above board and linked to inflation so seems a sure investment

He did say initial capital was quite large but with the way electric is going I’m sure it will payoff
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
Friend of mine recently installed the xchanger glycol system on 400 cows and is getting a quarterly cheque of 9k in RHI payments and his milk enters the tank at 3 degrees so tank compressor never running, he’s heating his hot water, space heating his workshop and even heating his washdown water [emoji23]

Makes an absolute mockery of the RHI scheme but its all above board and linked to inflation so seems a sure investment

He did say initial capital was quite large but with the way electric is going I’m sure it will payoff

Quite large ... £60k was what xchanger were asking. I am surprised his quarterly cheque is as large as that. Makes you proud of paying 1p+/kwhr in renewable obligation on every electricity bill - not
 
Quite large ... £60k was what xchanger were asking. I am surprised his quarterly cheque is as large as that. Makes you proud of paying 1p+/kwhr in renewable obligation on every electricity bill - not

I don’t think 60k is that bad when you price up ice banks and the like, everything seems to be expensive no matter what system you buy, at least with there’s you get something back
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
I don’t think 60k is that bad when you price up ice banks and the like, everything seems to be expensive no matter what system you buy, at least with there’s you get something back

Our glycol was a third of that price including recovery. But the manufacturer hasn’t registered for RHI
Still can’t believe he’s getting £36k a year though. No renewables pay back that quickly surely?
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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