Visualization and control of the refrigeration process at Picnic

October 21, 2024 | Reliance SCADA

Picnic is a Dutch food-delivery company operating in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Established in 2015, it now serves dozens of cities across all these countries. The company employs hundreds of people, who contribute to its exponential growth.

Picnic – food delivery

Picnic has been given many awards and has become a leader in some of the most challenging industries: inner-city logistics, e-commerce retail, and enterprise software.

To continue the expansion in the German market, Picnic has built a highly automated fulfillment center in the city of Oberhausen, which is located in the heart of the Ruhr area.

The Oberhausen fulfillment center in section

Here, grocery and non-grocery products are stored in zones with three different temperature levels: 20 °C, 4 °C, and −25 °C.

Control system

In 2024, Chiron-tec implemented a system for the control and visualization of the refrigeration process at Picnic. The system, which consists of two Siemens SIMATIC PLCs and the Reliance SCADA/HMI system, controls and monitors the Oberhausen fulfillment center's refrigeration plantroom, temperatures in the three temperature zones, and fresh air supply to all workplaces. Specifically:

• Central refrigeration plantroom (NH₃ and CO₂)
• 5 NH₃ compressors
• 11 CO₂ compressors
• 73 cooling sections
• 10 air handling units
• NH₃/CO₂ detection and safety system

The following special features are also part of the control system:

• Defrost queue
• Dynamic trending
• Energy control

Examples of visualization windows

Visualization of the plantroom

Cooling and ventilation

Visualization of an air handling unit

Air handling units on the roof

Cooling for the automated storage and retrieval system

A defrost queue

A trend

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