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Climatic engineering of high rise premises

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How does the airflow in refrigerated high-bay warehouses work?

Why study the aeraulics of high-rise warehouses?

Refrigerated high bay warehouses are a type of warehouse that has a cooling system to maintain constant and adequate temperatures for the stored products. This type of warehouse is often used to store temperature-sensitive products, such as foodstuffs, medicines and pharmaceuticals.

The cooling system can be sized for a stand-alone cold room or a system integrated into the warehouse itself. Refrigerated high-bay warehouses are designed to allow the storage of large quantities of products safely and without altering quality or freshness.

Example of a study for the climatic control of a high-rise workshop

Thermal stratification, a recurring problem in high-rise warehouses?

Thermal stratification is a common problem in high-rise warehouses. In fact, this physical phenomenon occurs when layers of air at different temperatures separate and do not mix, creating zones of inhomogeneous temperatures at different levels of the warehouse. This can result in poor temperature distribution, making it difficult to maintain a uniform temperature that can lead to loss of stored products.

Thermal stratification also makes it more difficult to optimize the energy efficiency of climate control systems, resulting in additional costs for companies. Therefore, it is important to work to minimize thermal stratification in high-rise warehouses by using strategies such as installing ventilation units, designing an optimal cooling system, and controlling hot air intakes.

Case of the cold rooms of storage of the pharmaceutical laboratories ?

These high-bay warehouses often hold tens or hundreds of millions of items. To ensure product quality, temperature monitoring systems in the pharmaceutical industry are very strict. Temperature differences can render entire batches obsolete and cause considerable economic damage.

Due to the geometric nature of this type of space with heights sometimes exceeding 20 meters, vertical temperature differences can develop if the ventilation and air conditioning technology does not take adequate countermeasures. For cooling in summer as well as for heating in winter, this leads to difficulties with regard to the type and positioning of the ventilation technology as well as the dimensioning and type of heating and cooling. Blocking of air flows by shelves and stored goods can have an adverse effect on air circulation, resulting in hot or cold areas in summer or winter.

In this context, it is of great importance to safeguard the temperature requirement for all external climatic conditions and operating situations. The flow simulation in connection with the thermal building simulation is an important instrument to support the planning.

Why use CFD simulation to study high shelving areas?

CFD simulation can predict thermal and climatic conditions, including airflow and temperature distribution, within existing and new high-bay areas.

This can help understand potential problem areas and identify them so that action can be taken to correct them quickly and at a lower cost. In addition, CFD simulation can evaluate the effectiveness of cooling and air conditioning systems in high racking areas and determine if adjustments are needed to maintain proper conditions for stored products.

Etude de l'aéraulique d'un entrepôt de stockage pharmaceutique
CFD simulation of the air movement distribution in the aisles of a storage room

Finally, CFD simulation can be used to evaluate the potential consequences of adding new equipment in high racking areas as well as when implementing redundancy systems. Indeed, systems that are too close to each other can interfere with each other and bypass effects or dead zones can appear. To evaluate the potential consequences of changes in temperature and humidity, CFD simulation is the most appropriate tool to minimize the risks for your products.

EOLIOS, a CFD design office specialized in the study of high rise halls, offers to bring its technical expertise in the understanding and modeling of thermo-aerodynamic exchanges, in order to analyze the problems you may be facing and to propose adapted solutions.

Is the installation of redundancy systems necessary?

What is system redundancy?

In thermal engineering, the term “system redundancy” means the duplication of systems to ensure that if one or more systems fail, the others in place can compensate for the lost power.

Indeed, as explained previously, the control of climatic conditions is a determining point in order to guarantee the good conformity of stored products and to avoid any loss of goods. However, the implementation of such systems is not necessarily easy. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to install new systems without one system disrupting another.

Why use CFD simulation to size your system redundancy?

Using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation to size the redundancy of your systems can offer many benefits. First of all, CFD simulation allows to test different redundancy scenarios without taking real risks with the existing system. This can help identify the best redundancy strategies in terms of reliability, cost and performance. In addition, CFD simulation can predict system performance under real-world conditions, which can be difficult to do without a computer model.

Finally, CFD simulation can help avoid costly errors in system design by providing accurate data on expected performance.

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