Cool Room For Hazardous Goods Facility

Customer Success Story: Hazardous Goods Facility in Altona (VIC)

In 2010/2011 Heuch was asked to build a cold storage facility for a major hazardous facility (MHF) in Altona. As a major hazardous facility, this site faced considerably stricter safety standards and operating protocols than a commercial facility. This presented extra design challenges to the Heuch engineers.

Some of the challenges faced included:

• All electrical equipment must be classified to a Zone 1 hazardous area level,
• The cool room required a hoist with the ability to move heavy products inside the room. To minimise the risk of sparks potentially igniting an explosive atmosphere, an air driven pneumatic hoist was chosen,
• Fire extinguisher and spillage clean up materials must be located within 10m of the facility,
• A new safety shower within 10m of the main room,
• A bunded plant area sufficient to cater for a leakage of all goods within the facility was required,
• 3m exclusion zone from the bund.

A welded steel, galvanised structure was installed to support the cool room panels, carry the fan/coil cooling units and the two monorails that would be used for lifting the cylinders. This structure was fitted with Kingspan panels. These panels were exposed to the local environment and the roof was sloped so that rainwater drained away from the coolroom and no pooling of rainwater occurred.

The air-cooled refrigeration equipment was placed in a custom built colorbond room located outside the bund area. A Form 1 electrical cubicle was located inside this room and also rated to both an IP65 standard and to operate in a hazardous environment. The control of the coolroom conditions is by an operator interface panel located inside this room.

A preventative programmed maintenance schedule was implemented with 3 monthly non-invasive inspections and annual pre-summer services.

A comprehensive dossier was provided at the completion of the project including operating and maintenance manual, MSDS for refrigerant and lubricants, hazardous component certificates, wiring, P.I and general arrangement drawings.