COLD STORES Safety and compliance
Cold stores and blast freezers are high-risk environments, and businesses have a legal duty to understand and manage these risks. Here Steve Shipp, managing director of Ultra Refrigeration, explores the nature of those risks, how they can be minimised and the part that can be played by good refrigeration system design.
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n the UK, health and safety at work is governed by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which outlines an employer’s responsibility towards its employees,
contractors and members of the public. The regulations, identifi ed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), require businesses to apply specifi c and rigorous policies designed to recognise and minimise the risks that arise as a result of its operations.
This is important to prevent accidents that can lead to serious injuries, or worse, for both staff and visitors. If an accident happens, it can also have other consequences for a business, such as legal action, fi nes, business downtime (which means losing money), damaged equipment, and bad publicity.
By their very design, cold stores, blast freezers and other temperature-controlled areas may create working environments that are inherently hostile to human life due to low temperatures and the rapid movement of cold air. Additional risks may be created by (and not limited to): the increased chance of accidents such as slips and falls caused by condensation, freezing surfaces and ice; reduced mental faculty, dexterity and reactions of workers caused by lower temperatures; and the presence of moving equipment such as forklifts.
There are also potential risks associated with the
refrigeration system itself which is often, but not always, located in a separate plant room outside the cooled space. A separate plant room allows employers to restrict access to the equipment to authorised personnel only, as there are heightened risks associated with electrical machinery. The refrigerants used in these systems are often hazardous
– toxic and/or fl ammable – and are governed by their own regulations, so require very specifi c risk assessments. Preventing and managing the risks associated with potential leaks of these refrigerants is an important responsibility for employers.
Safer by design While the responsibility for Health and Safety compliance lies
fi rmly with the employer, the role played by good refrigeration system design in keeping the workplace safe should not be overlooked. The fact that cold stores are becoming more ‘intelligent’, with automated storage systems which minimise manual handling of goods, cannot completely eliminate the need for humans to enter the refrigerated space; perhaps for inspection, for maintenance or to fi x problems. The equipment located within this space should be designed to minimise the time required for human intervention. We recently attended a site where this aspect of safety clearly hadn’t been considered at the design stage. Our client asked us to replace the defrost heaters on the evaporator as they weren’t operating eff ectively. Unfortunately, the evaporator had been installed so close to the side wall that the elements couldn’t be removed without dropping the evaporator. This apparently quick and simple task now turned into a major job requiring specialist access equipment and many more hours working at -20°C as the customer, understandably, didn’t want to turn off the cold store. All this could have been avoided; had we designed this cold store; we would have specifi ed low pressure hot gas defrost, which eff ectively removes the need for heating elements altogether and can be more energy effi cient if it can use free heat from elsewhere. Even better would be a design that removes all the equipment from inside the cold store and instead delivers ducted cold air into the space. This eliminates the need to enter the cold store for maintenance, and leaves more space in the store for produce.
22 July 2024 •
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