Tom, While we have not gone down the absorption chiller route, we have done the work on something similar. In Mozambique, the bulk of fishing is done artisanally. Unsold fish are dried resulting in a much reduced value. What we have proposed on the village scale is a 20kW gasifier/generator that will produce about 3 tpd flake ice during 12 daylight hours per day while also charging some batteries. The ice flaker is a standard electrical chilling unit. We proposed two cold rooms, one for ice and one for fish. The chiller on the fish cold room has a much smaller power requirement, of the order of 1.5kW. The intention is that this will run off batteries and an inverter during the night. As the unit will be closed and the door not opened during the night, the amount of running time will be reduced to meet losses ex walls/floor/roof/door. Hence batteries and inverter being appropriate. The fishermen fill cold boxes with the flake ice and set off. As they bring fish aboard, they gut and clean and place the fish on the ice. A refrigerated truck makes a regular (1x to 2x per week depending on volume) run to collect the fish. Total costs at site: about $50k including the cold rooms, gasifier/generator, ice maker, batteries, inverter, etc.
If your fruit can handle water, one method that is used with carrots is hydrocooling with chilled water at 2oC. Circulating cold water is sprayed onto the fruit as it travels through the spray on mesh belt. This rapidly cools the fruit and allows it to go directly to storage at 5oC. In storage you can use an absorption chiller for the refrigeration. Note: absorption chillers can only supply a cold water source at 5oC. The other way to do rapid cooling is with blast freezers which are a whole new ball game - high power running for a portion of the day vs lower power over a longer period. Hope this helps Rex Zietsman --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com _______________________________________________ Gasification mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Gasifiers, News and Information see our web site: http://gasifiers.bioenergylists.org/
