The Great Northern Distillery in Ireland with Upgraded Cooling System from ICS Cool Energy

ICS Cool Energy delivered efficiency and sustainability focused enhancements to the cooling systems at the Great Northern Distillery in Dundalk, Co. Louth in Ireland. The project involved a tailored approach with temporary cooling installations proceeding the permanent, high efficiency and low global warming potential (GWP) system.

“Quality of our products and sustainability of our operations is very important to us,” said Brian Watts, distillery manager at the Great Northern Distillery. ”Producing high quality single malt whiskey requires precise temperature control throughout the entire process. We were looking for a partner that could help us modernise the existing cooling of our distillery fermenters. We wanted to make sure the new system is tuned to our requirements and would also allow us to increase production. ICS Cool Energy proved to be experts for the job.”

ICS Cool Energy team inspected the distillery’s cooling system, which consisted of a cooling tower and an underground tank. The distillery was originally founded on the site of the former Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk, and the site inspection revealed that the fermenters had been bespoke built, with no design data available. The fact that the incoming water temperature is dependent on the ambient temperature, and that there was little operational data available, caused an additional challenge to estimate the cooling demand.

Following the on-site inspection and calculations for the system’s requirements, ICS Cool Energy installed a hire Chiller 375 with pump and tank, connecting it to an incumbent heat exchanger installed in the common flow from the cooling tower to the fermenters. The hire installation gave the Great Northern Distillery the chance to diagnose and adapt the system to their requirements.

“Throughout the following months, we made several modifications to the pumps on both the chilled water and product sides of the fermenters, adjusting the chilled water setpoint until we finally achieved the required result,” said Anthony Duff, maintenance manager at the Great Northern Distillery. “The temporary, hire system from ICS Cool Energy gave us the flexibility to keep our production running, while monitoring and adjusting all the system’s parameters to determine the most efficient option for a permanent solution.”

Following the hire period, the Great Northern Distillery decided to install a permanent Imperium air  cooled chiller designed specifically for process applications. The Imperium chiller delivers high performance and reliability thanks to the inverter screw compressor technology and works with low GWP R1234ze refrigerant for reduced environmental footprint.

“To each of the projects, ICS Cool Energy brings the experience from designing and delivering thousands of solutions for distilleries and beverage manufacturing applications of all sizes,” said Craig Hodgson, operations manager Ireland at ICS Cool Energy. “We’re proud that we had the opportunity to leverage that expertise and help the Great Northern Distillery create the operational environment they needed to make the best quality product.”