London food distribution charity Felix is using Beijer Ref’s SEC200 heat recovery technology to help deliver hot water with almost zero energy consumption.
Felix rescues surplus food and delivers it to community organisations and schools. The SEC200 was installed at its Deptford site as part of a major refrigeration project delivered by KDH Projects, with support from Beijer Ref Technical and the HVACR commissioning team.
The system recovers waste heat from the refrigeration plant and uses it to supply hot water to the site’s new canteen, utility room, shower room and first-floor toilets.
Almost zero hot energy consumption
“Performance has been excellent,” said William Liggett at KDH Projects. “After several months of continuous operation, the data shows almost zero energy consumption for hot water production. The SEC200 is recovering so much waste heat that it’s effectively delivering free hot water. The results match, and in some areas exceed, our expectations.”
Liggett said the standout benefit for both contractor and customer has been the reduction in hot water energy use. “The system has virtually eliminated the need for traditional water heating, delivering significant ongoing cost savings,” he added.
The Deptford installation follows earlier SEC200 projects for Felix, with the charity now installing the technology across new sites. Nick Clifton at Felix said: “Following the success in our previous installations, in our most recent build in Deptford, utilising our increased chilled storage capacity, the SEC200 has been able to supply hot water serving our incredible new canteen, utility room, shower room and toilets on the first floor.
“We now install SEC200s on all our new sites with the confidence in practice and knowledge of both their environmental and economic sustainability.”
Recovering heat from refrigeration
SEC, or Sustainable Energy Controller, is a standalone heat recovery product that harvests heat from refrigeration and air conditioning systems and converts it into hot water. It is designed for commercial applications where there is both a cooling demand from refrigeration or air conditioning, and a heating demand for hot water or low temperature heating.
When a refrigeration system is running, SEC recovers heat that would otherwise be rejected and uses it to generate hot water. Even when the cold rooms are satisfied and down to temperature, SEC continues to generate heat by operating the condensing unit as an air-to-water heat pump. This maximises the use of a refrigeration system that would have traditionally switched off when the space being refrigerated was at its set point.
For the Deptford project, the SEC200 was installed alongside Danfoss Optyma condensing units, with evaporators varying by application.
“During a major refrigeration build, we identified a strong opportunity to improve sustainability by recovering waste heat from the condensers,” Liggett said. “The refrigeration plant was generating large amounts of heat that would otherwise be rejected to atmosphere, while we were separately consuming energy to heat water.
“The SEC200 offered the perfect solution, capturing this waste heat and converting it into free, usable hot water. The energy savings, efficiency gains and environmental benefits made it the obvious choice, especially for a project supporting a UK charity.”
Smooth commissioning
The first installation was supported by Beijer Ref Technical and the HVACR commissioning team who helped KDH integrate the system with the wider refrigeration plant and site monitoring.
“There was a learning curve initially, but the support from Beijer Ref Technical and their HVACR commissioning team was great,” said Liggett. “Working closely with our engineers, they helped streamline integration, and with a few custom tweaks at our end for communication with our monitoring system, the unit was fully commissioned and running smoothly.”
Clair Deighton, Beijer Ref Refrigeration Product Development Manager, said: “KDH Projects consistently focuses on delivering long-term value for its customers, taking a forward-thinking approach to sustainability.
“By integrating multiple SEC units across customer sites it help ends users reduce energy consumption and operating costs by regenerating waste heat into usable hot water, which in turn lowers both utility bills and carbon emissions.”
To find out more about SEC, download the brochure here.
To find out more about Felix, visit https://felix.org/
