Côte Commercial Kitchen

Since the pandemic, almost every enclosed commercial and public environment air quality has become a significant issue for organisations to address. Commercial kitchens are no exception and have their own unique requirements. Not only do they have to remove the steam and cooking odours from the kitchen, they also need fresh, temperature-regulated make-up air in quite large volumes to ensure the kitchen operates at maximum efficiency.

Air quality is a contributor to achieving the standards required as laid out by Food Standards Agency (FSA) that all kitchens should be SALSA & HACCP accredited and to gain these accreditations commercial kitchens must have an inbuilt ventilation system.

Today, many restaurant chains and restaurant groups have a development and central production kitchen. Côte, the well-loved French Bistro chain is no exception, and recently opened a central kitchen in West London.

AirCraft Air Handling were recently approached by the contractor of the new Côte to help with the design and manufacture of an AHU system that would be capable of supplying upwards of 20 kitchen stations with fresh filtered air.

Working with our client, we designed a bespoke AHU system that incorporated five large internally located AHUs with controllers, four of which were indirect gas fired units serving fresh filtered air to the kitchen stations with a delivery rate of approximately 60 cubic meters per second when running at maximum speed. All of the five units’ temperature-controlled warm air indirect gas fired AHUs were fitted with control systems that were BMS compatible with BACnet and Modbus data communications protocols that allows for detailed monitoring of the equipment.

All five units were fully assembled prior to site delivery and subsequently AirCraft Air Handling engineers undertook on-site testing and commissioning of the controls.