“The fusion of two cooling stations into one”

The Sorteerhal Zuid spans about fifteen thousand square meters and contains some technical feats. Most striking are the fully automatic buffer and luggage trolleys, virtually autonomous robots that load carts which are then driven to the aircraft. The sorting hall located across from the control tower at Schiphol Centre can handle two thousand bags per hour.

Cooling comes from two separate cooling plants, each taking a different as their domain. Ipero was asked to create a new design including both a free cooling application and be able to immediately solve several problems. It needed to take into account the fact that the cold supply could not be interrupted, similar to the preparation of an open heart surgery.

Analyses showed that the current two cooling stations could best be linked to each other. Besides solving these problems, there was an additional advantage: an increase in redundancy of the cold supply. In addition to the hydraulic design, Ipero developed and tested the operation of the automation system.