Ammonia system fix.

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This project won the 2009 Milton W. Garland Commemorative Refrigeration Award for Project Excellence, which is presented by ASHRAE's Refrigeration Committee to recognize the designer and owner of a non-comfort cooling refrigeration application that highlights innovation and/or new technologies.

When temporarily fixing a refrigerant leak is cheaper than permanently repairing the leak, a problem can last for a long time. In this case, at a brewery run by the San Miguel Corporation in the Philippines, the problem lasted for nearly a decade at a cumulative cost of $648,000 for the monthly charging of the tanks with refrigerant.

The problem began in 1989 when an expansion project at the brewery called for the installation of 12 jacketed beer fermenter/ storage steel cylindro-conical tanks (CCT), each measuring at least 8 m (26 ft) (diameter) by 20 m (66 ft) (height). Each tank was enveloped with a metal jacket where ammonia flows continuously to maintain a -7 [degrees]C (19.4 [degrees]F) …