Institution news
Stephen explained his role and involvement with regards to the seminar, critical engineering challenges and why it is important for engineers to attend.
Q: Please could you briefly explain your role, involvement and experience with regards to the cold chain?
Stephen Maile (SM): I am the Sales Director for Hultsteins UK Limited (formally Cold Connect Limited) and Designer of Ecogen, a hydraulic generator to provide hybrid power for diesel transport refrigeration units. I have also worked in technical roles for Petter, Thermo King, Frigoblock, Ecofridge, Govers, Hubbard, Zanotti, Dearman and Hultsteins.
Q: What are your main challenges when it comes to the current cold chain?
SM: The main challenge is to get UK operators off diesel refrigeration as the engines they use are only 25% efficient and their emissions could be 30 times greater than a standard road vehicle. The problem is that many of the government bodies don’t recognise that most refrigerated trucks create far more emissions than anything else on the road.
Q: How important is rethinking engineering of the cold chain to the task of achieving the net-zero carbon target?
SM: Running refrigeration units powered from the truck engine reduces the fridge emissions to zero straight away so by installing Ecogen on all tractor units pulling refrigerated trailers, this will allow hybrid operation of the existing refrigeration unit. When the trailer is replaced, it can be with a fully electric unit powered for virtually nothing from the tractor unit.
Q: Regarding new cold chain technologies, what would you say are the ones to watch for the future?
SM: For standalone operation, liquid nitrogen is the most powerful cooling agent and should be used on all electric trucks. A new version of eutectic could be used - why use electric to make cold when you can store cold to use at any time?
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this event?
SM: We need to invest in new technology, and we need people to think outside the box for solutions. One way of doing this is to utilise the environmentally friendly products we have in the most efficient way. If we take liquefied natural gas for truck propulsion, the truck runs from gas not liquid, so the liquid has to change state to a gas. In this process, it takes heat to do this using this same liquid in the fridge absorbing the heat to create a change of state to a gas which would increase the efficiency of the gas.
The 'Engineering an efficient and sustainable cold chain' online seminar will be taking place on 2 March 2021.
Join this seminar to:
- Hear from leaders in cold chain management including Asda, University of Birmingham, Unilever, Cold Chain Federation, Hulsteins, Star Technical Solutions, WAVE Refrigeration and others
- Understand the cold chain challenge posed by COVID-19 vaccines and how this is being addressed globally
- Tackle new F-gas regulations with an understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of alternative refrigerants
- Make the most of innovations including aerofoils and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve the efficiency existing cold chain systems
- Discover how your organisation can benefit from the latest developments in cooling technology for the transportation link of the cold chain
To book your place, please visit www.imeche.org/coldchain.