Application Note: Monitoring Coolers and Freezers w/ Glycol Sensor

Current Standard Solution:

Carrier offers a remote temperature monitoring solution that can be implemented to monitor coolers and freezers used for food storage. In addition to monitoring temperatures remotely, current transformers can be added to monitor compressor status and amperage.   

Problem:

In some cases cooler/freezer temperatures are never recorded.  Often times especially in the food service industry these temperatures are manually recorded which requires a person to be onsite.  

There are several advantages of remote temperature monitoring on coolers and freezers utilizing an IoT based platform.

• Unexpected loss and costly damage of product is prevented through the use of proactive and custom alerts of high-risk conditions.
• Eliminates the need for manually recording temperatures.  In addition system reports are easily generated and exported for compliance and audits.
• Remotely access system to monitor, assess and troubleshoot alerts without having to be on site.
•  The risk of losing product is reduced due to out of range cooler and freezer temperatures.
• Using a traditional BAS system  would require complexed wiring, point discovery, trend log and alert configuration. 

Solution:

 Remote monitoring  of a cooler/freezer can be implemented easily with Carrier.  The components needed to accomplish this task are a Central  Control Unit (CCU) ,  HyperStat, 10k Type 2 glycol sensor(s), and  current transformer(s) CT. The glycol sensor(s) and CT(s) are connected to the hyperstat. The hyperstat is then paired to the CCU which receives the hyperstat sensor data over 900mhz mesh. The data is then aggregated by the CCU  and pushed to the cloud where it can be viewed on facilisight.

Why glycol sensors ? 

• Glycol has a low freezing point and acts as a buffer which results in more accurate temperature measurements. 
• The use of glycol sensors also prevents inaccurate measurements and false alarms during rapid temperature fluctuations such as the opening of a cooler/freezer door. 

Why current transformers  ?

• A current transformer does not have to be installed but is highly recommended because it gives insight into the cooler/freezer whereby compressor operation and cooler/freezer temperatures can be correlated.
• The use of a CT also helps in determining if a compressor is operating within manufacture design specification  or failure is imminent.  

Configuration 

The figures below show the hyperstat physical connections and configuration menu screen during the pairing process,

The following options are available from the drop down menu. For the purposes of this application note we want to monitor a cooler and freezer simultaneously. We want to select 10k Type 2 probes for both TH1 and TH2. We'll call TH1 our freezer temperature and TH2 our cooler temperature. Analog Input 1 is our freezer compressor CT 0-50A and Analog Input 2 our cooler compressor CT 0-50A.

• • Parameter	Purpose	Default Value	Values in the drop-down list
    temperatureOffset	To set the offset temperature	0 (°F)	Range from -10 to + 10 in .1 increments
    TH1	To sense inputs	10K Type 2 probe.	Generic 1-100Kohms
    TH2	To sense inputs	10K Type 2 probe.	Generic 1-100Kohms
    Analog- in1	To define the inputs to sense	Generic 0-10V	0-2 in. Pressure Sensor 0-0.25 Differential Pressure Sensor Airflow Sensor Humidity, CO2(0-2000) CO(0-100) NO2(0-5) Current TX (0-10Amps) Current TX (0-20Amps) Current TX (0-50Amps) ION Meter 0-1 Million ions/cc
    Analog- in2	To define the inputs to sense	Generic 0-10V	0-2 in. Pressure Sensor 0-0.25 Differential Pressure Senso Airflow Sensor Humidity, CO2(0-2000) CO(0-100) NO2(0-5) Current TX (0-10Amps) Current TX (0-20Amps) Current TX (0-50Amps) ION Meter 0-1 Million ions/cc

     

Once all the configurations are set see widgets configured in the heat map pages below.

Result:

• • Cost effective temperature monitoring solution for hotels, food storage facilities, fast food chains and restaurants.
  • Custom alerts and analytics  can be created for the site.
  • Downloadable system operation data with the click of a button .
  • No need for custom programming configuration is simple. 
  • Monitoring of cooler/freezer temperatures are easily implemented with an end-to-end Carrier solution.