Hatch’s Ventilation, Cooling and Refrigeration Engineering Design Group (VCREDG) offers clients a complete service package to design and install ventilation and cooling systems in mines. This extends from conceptual design to full detailed engineering and implementation.

Hatch provides:

• Thermal design and optimization of ventilation systems
• Design and specification of refrigeration machines
• Process control
• Piping and insulation
• Procurement
• Construction management
• Commissioning
• Final acceptance of new and upgraded systems
• Troubleshooting

The VCREDG has extensive experience in large and environmentally-friendly and sustainable refrigeration plants, including those operating on ammonia. Refrigeration plant performance assessment and safety audits are carried out to ensure safe and cost-effective plant performance. Refrigeration plants of 40 MW of refrigeration capacity with leaving water temperatures down to 1°C have been successfully designed and commissioned by Hatch.

The distribution of the cooling water to the heat exchangers, its subsequent collection, treatment-and-return pumping system are all designed and optimized by in-house specialists to ensure an operating system that is effective, uses the least energy and is fully integrated with the ventilation system of a mine.