How does intelligent mechanical cooling for potatoes work?
Maintaining potato quality during storage is essential. The longer you keep the potato fresh, the more flexibility you have to choose the right trading time which means better margins. Mechanical cooling is an excellent method of potato storage with the longest shelf life and minimal weight loss. At the same time, it provides a solution to the ban on chemical sprouting agent chlorpropham and the social pressure to have more energy-efficient production.
Equans’s mechanical cooling is an intelligent and completely closed storage environment. The computer program continuously measures the temperature, humidity and CO2 in the storage unit and adjusts the cooling capacity and the storage program to the cooling demand of the product. This delivers stable storage conditions and offers you complete control of the various stages of the storage process. If the CO2 content exceeds a certain value, the system drains it into the atmosphere.
Storing potatoes with less weight loss and higher yields? Choose our mechanical storage.
Request a free information brochureDry potatoes without heating
Outdoor conditions no longer determine your product quality, but rather the conditions inside the storage unit. The installation control uses intelligent technique(EC). This system automatically adapts to the characteristics and requirements of your product. This enables you to dry potatoes without the requirement to heat them. Our intelligent mechanical cooling solutions are customised for the best potatoes with the best possible quality.
Fresh for longer
Stable conditions maintain quality, size, and weight of potatoes. They stay as good-as-fresh until the summer, so you have more flexibility to choose the right time to sell your products at a good price. Do you also process your potatoes? Since less sugars are formed in the potato, minimum aging occurs. This reduces the need for post-processing, resulting in lower energy consumption and cleaner production.
More products to trade
In addition to potatoes of top quality for longer time, you also have more marketable products. A damaged potato in conventional storage can rot and infect surrounding potatoes. The intelligent mechanical cooling of Equans mummifies a damaged potato so that it cannot affect other potatoes. This way, rot nests are as good as out. Due to minimal drying, fewer pressure marks and therefore reduced peeling waste, intelligent management cooling storage can provide you with up to 30% more marketable products.
Significantly lower energy costs
The temperature of the storage facility is constant all year round. This significantly minimizes your energy consumption. You can also use the residual heat from the cooling installation for other applications, such as the heating of office spaces, for the potato washer or the washing water. This significantly reduces energy consumption, energy costs and CO2 emissions.
Equans’ mechanical potato storage works with environmentally friendly natural refrigerants, such as CO2 and ammonia. These agents guarantee high efficiency and low energy consumption, without compromising the cooling capacity. This allows you to store potatoes and seed potatoes sustainably. At the same time, this secures your business operations, as since 2022, cooling installations may only be built with natural refrigerants.
Fewer or no more sprout inhibitors needed
Due to the completely closed storage space, environmental factors such as the temperature and humidity of outside air no longer affect the product quality. Stable storage conditions ensure much less germination. This allows you to greatly reduce or even eliminate the use of sprout inhibitors. Our intelligent mechanical cooling is therefore a perfect solution for the ban on the chemical sprout inhibitor chlorpropham. This makes the system of particular interest to organic potato cultivation. If you still want to use (biological) sprout inhibitors, you can keep them indoors in closed storage and they will not evaporate.
Are you curious about how our potato storage proves itself in practice every day? Then read the Borgmann customer case. Cooling independence from outside air ensures significantly less dehydration of potatoes. The usual figure is around 10%, but with this technology we achieved less than 3% dehydration. This gave Borgmann potatoes more weight, higher quality and therefore higher yields.
In addition to an outside air ventilation system
You can also use an intelligent mechanical cooling installation as a supplement to a ventilation system using outside air. In spring particularly, it happens that the air from outside is too warm to keep the temperature of your potatoes low. At that point, you can keep the tubers dormant for a little longer with an intelligent mechanical cooling system. As a result, the quality is better preserved and the storage season is extended.
Costs of intelligent mechanical potato storage
The increased cost of this installation compared to a conventional storage system has a payback period of up to 3 years. The solution that best suits your company depends on, for example, the type of product in your storage (only potatoes or, for example, carrots and onions too?), the product variety, your business conditions and of course your future plans.
Trading house Binst Breeding & Selection also stores seed potatoes in a mechanical potato storage facility from Equans. This gives Binst everything it needs to deliver the seed potatoes to customers worldwide in the best possible condition and to obtain the highest possible price for the grower of the seed potatoes.
